


Knew you at all

by ilyena-sylph (ilyena_sylph), Katarik



Category: Labyrinth (1986), Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Chromatic Character, Crossover, F/M, Gen, Long, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-05
Updated: 2009-05-05
Packaged: 2017-10-14 09:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 49,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena-sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katarik/pseuds/Katarik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah Williams wants to be a wizard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knew you at all

Sentience was such a fascinating thing, the Lone Power mused -- not for the first time in Its eons-old existence -- as It watched a truly excellent example of the point at work. Most sentient species preferred, for any number of reasons including cases of self-inflicted denial, to blame It for their woes... when few things could be farther from reality. At least, it wasn't typically true that their troubles were of Its design, once they made their Choice. While It was still tempting them, of course their trouble was Its fault. Once they made their Choice, however, they _had_ Its gift of chaos and entropic death. What they did with it from then on was their business, and such intriguing business that could be, entirely without Its involvement: It far preferred to watch the things that the various species did to themselves without It helping in the slightest. Of course there were moments that It interfered, reached in and twisted to further Its ends... but mainly, It let things go as they pleased.

Humans, for example. Even this early in their existence, they possessed an uncanny skill for creating worse things for themselves than It ever would have. The young myth patiently building his kingdom out of human dreams was a classic example of their ability. When he finished, he would be King of a realm halfway in and halfway out of time; one built up entirely from their own fears, designed to be precisely what terrified them most at the moment -- a kingdom that stole their sons, and a king who stole their daughters, their wives.

This was an almost captivating piece of work, It thought as It observed the painstaking work the young myth was putting into this 'Labyrinth'. The Lone One watched, and It was amused, as It thought to Itself that It had seen legends born before. Most of them died before they became much of anything, though even the ones that died did tend to come back under other names... eventually. This one, though, held promise. Later, perhaps, It would return to this one, this Goblin King, and see what he was growing into.

***

What, as it turned out, the Goblin King had grown into was intriguing indeed, when the Lone One came back a millennium later.

It hadn't truly expected the young myth to still be there. Myths faded without belief, after all. That was something It had seen many times. But this one... this particular myth seemed to be doing an excellent job of surviving. Perhaps the secret of his resilience had something to do with just what was behind this myth's existence. The Labyrinth was something that shaped itself to each of the humans that touched it, became what they feared, just as Jareth was someone who could be precisely what they wanted... that gave him an adaptability few myths seemed to have. Really, It barely had to work at all to see ways in which Jareth could be very useful indeed.

Not _least_ of which because It had had nothing to do with anything Jareth was, or did.

The Lone One smiled slightly as It manifested in the Labyrinth, tossing a perfect crystal ball back and forth in Its hands, light refracting from the gleaming thing in odd ways. "I've brought you a gift," It said to the empty air, as It placed the ball on rough, stony ground and watched it roll purposefully away.

Jareth was a mortal creation, though his kind had made the Choice as well. The Lone One had had no hand in him. Jareth would not be overshadowed by It, nor was he an avatar, nor anything else but human nightmares made manifest. Even the crystal was only a focus for the sort of power Jareth would have learned to wield as he matured further. This was just... speeding things up a bit.

Really, it was as though humans had made Jareth just for It. Such interesting things he could do...

The Lone One disappeared, and elsewhere in the Labyrinth a white owl fluttered its feathers as he watched a crystal roll towards him, glinting in the sunshine. As the crystal reached him, he shifted forms, taking two feet and hands, and dipped down to let it bounce up into one of them.

"What are you?" Jareth asked it quietly, turning the glittering ball over in his fingers.

***

"Another one lost," the woman said tiredly, leaning against a sun-warmed rock well away from the village. Her people knew well both what she was and what she did, but they preferred not to see the moments when she spoke to the old ones.

The wind moving among the savanna grasses spoke slowly with the voice of her grandfather, asking if this lost daughter had been lost in the same fashion as the other, years before.

The woman nodded, and the wind blew more strongly, brushing away the sweat beading on the bone in her nose. She tilted her head, baring more of her neck to the cooling breeze, but her words were bitter. "Her son is vanished, and she does nothing but sit on the floor staring into a glittering rock ball. Even when the rock is removed, she stares at her hands as though it is still there. Grandfather, can we not fight what does this?"

/No,/ the wind said, and someone listening closely might have caught old sorrow and anger in the wind's harsh gust as it scattered the birds in a distant baobab tree into a flight of whirring wings and raised cries. /What does this is not something we can fight the way you mean, granddaughter. This is not a wizard's task, or the Old Red One's work./

The wizard slumped back at the wind's reply, closing her eyes in exhausted grief for long moments. "Grandfather... how is this not Its work? The boy is gone, and she slips farther away day by day into _nothing_... this is entropy."

/Not entropy that was forced on her, or that she was tricked into taking.../ the wind said quietly, sadly, eddies of dust curling rust-red around her feet. /She made a choice, and now she reaps it, lost in her dreams./

"Her dreams? Wait... what offered her the choice?"

There was a long pause, before the wind answered her. /... myth. Old, and powerful, but not of the Old Red One's hand. She wanted this.../ Her grandfather's voice blew harder, then, all intent and demand whipping through the grasses. /If you want to fight this, granddaughter, learn why she wished her son away. Then, perhaps, you can keep another woman from making the same choice. _That_ is wizard's work./

***

//Part of my problem,// Sarah thought ruefully as she snagged a copy of the script from the pile on the stage, //is that I always seem to be typecast.//

Almost anyone that looked at Sarah Williams would dismiss her as just another typical young dreamer girl; all long, loose dark hair and wide green eyes in a pale, pretty face. The fact that she typically wore something like her current off-white, creamy peasant blouse and pale ribbons in her hair, and carried them off with the ease of someone used to dealing with long sleeves and hair in her eyes, did not help to change that impression.

Someone looking more closely would notice her lack of jewelry, and her scuffed tennis shoes, and the fact that she looked at the theater as though she were calculating strategies for it, and wonder if she was as much of a dreamer as they had first thought. Most people wouldn't look that closely.

And because they wouldn't, in a play about wizards and witches and fairy princesses Sarah would doubtless be Princess No. 1, or whatever ridiculous name she might be given. She was hoping this audition for a thoroughly modern play would break that habit.

She glanced at her script, then froze.

Someone looking at Sarah Williams now would step backwards very quickly, and would not be subtle about it

She had seen the scripts when she came in. Simple slim paperback volumes that were scribbled on and dog-eared from years of players' use. What was in her hand now was still a slim paperback volume, but the words on the cover were _So You Want to be a Wizard_.

Staring at the book, Sarah ran her fingers over the stapled spine, feeling the quality of the paper. It was a cheap book, same texture as any high-school script, meant to be used for a few years and then discarded.

But Sarah had seen every script the school carried at least twice, and this title was not supposed to be here.

Sarah walked calmly to the back of the theater and slipped the book into her backpack. Then she returned to the front, got a new script, and opened it to flick through for the part she had planned to try out for.

***

When Sarah got home she smiled at Karen, waved absently at her father where he was working on one of his projects, bent to kiss Toby's grubby cheek, and -- routine finished -- headed upstairs to her room at as close to a dead run as she could get away with in the house. Then she pulled the book out of her backpack, sorting through Shakespeare and Bullfinch and Eliot to find it where it had nestled down in them.

She climbed up onto her bed once she had it in hand and settled in to look through the book. After Jareth, she hadn't avoided books -- the very thought had been horrifying. Sarah could no more avoid books than most people could avoid breathing; they were simply too important to her. She had, out of caution, avoided fantasy and instead switched to science-fiction and poetry and histories and classical mythology for the next couple of years. She'd read Toby stories about Athena and dragons which blew fire onto wriggling silver threads that ate the land for his bedtime rituals instead of tales about princesses and goblins and faeries. Books, and the worlds they showed her, had been Sarah's life and fuel for her dreams for years. Even now, even when she knew that the dreams could be real and could be more dangerous than she imagined, giving up dreaming would be worse than dying.

Karen hadn't understood why Sarah had suddenly stopped complaining about babysitting for several years, or why she occasionally had had to shake Sarah awake from where she had fallen asleep over Toby's crib with a book in her hands and a flashlight still on. She didn't know that it was easier for Sarah to sleep if she were the one watching Toby.

Sarah still had nightmares about Toby sometimes. Most of them involved empty cribs and silver-edged darkness.

Despite how well she knew that some books were dangerous, she opened the book anyway, reading down the chapter titles carefully. Her eyes widened as she read, "Preliminary Determinations: A Question of Aptitude." "Wizardly Preoccupation and Predilections." "Basic Equipment and Milieus." "Introduction to Spells, Binding, and _Geasa_." "Familiars and Helpmeets: Advice to the Initiate." "Psychotropic Spelling."

Most of the concepts on those pages Sarah was vaguely familiar with. She had read a lot of fantasy, before. The rules and conceits of fantasy were not easily forgotten, even so much later.

She'd never seen those rules written out quite like this. She had never seen geasa explained like the contracts that they were, with a table of terminology and a listing of the consequences for breaking one. She had never seen emphatic warnings before an explanation of psychotropic spelling theory regarding just why it would be a very bad idea for someone to attempt a spell to alter another thinking creature's mind.

Perhaps this wasn't a joke.

Most people probably would have assumed at the outset that the slim little book was practice for the senior prank. They would have laughed, waved it at their friends to pull them in on the joke, then perhaps tossed it back in the pile. Maybe buried it down among the others to see if they could startle someone else with it. Sarah, too, had assumed someone on the troupe was either playing an elaborate joke, or practicing a plot for their book or their next play.

What she had not done was taken it for granted that they were doing so.

Sarah continued flipping slowly through the book, but she stopped when she got to a page of type sitting alone in the middle of the page, looking quietly solemn and steady against the cheap, yellowing paper. She read through the words silently, her face setting into a contemplative, deliberate mask.

Someone looking at Sarah Williams now would have wondered what she was thinking, that her green eyes were so cold, and they might well have been a little afraid of this teenage girl and her serious, searching look.

If she had felt like giving that onlooker an answer, it would have fallen along these lines. She was thinking about Toby, and about a self-described "cowardly dwarf" who had saved her life, and about a ten-foot tusked orange monster who had nevertheless been the single kindest being Sarah had ever met, and about a small, fierce, courageous fox-knight and his sheepdog steed. She was thinking about a tiny goblin woman hunched under a load of rubbish she could not release, and about peaches with worms inside, and about sparkling ballrooms that were bounded by a crystal nutshell.

And she was thinking about the Goblin King; about both the smug condescension in his voice when she had made her wish and the stricken look on his face when Sarah had realized where the Labyrinth's power really lay.

She was thinking about life. All the petty little cruelties of it, and how she felt she had been punched when she realized what Ludo and Hoggle and Sir Didymus were willing to do for her. Because she'd said she was their friend.

She was thinking about duty, and the payment of debts, and about the fact that life was not fair, but sometimes you won anyway.

She was also -- and this was perhaps another reason that someone looking at her might be a little nervous -- thinking very seriously about consequences. She was recalling a dark-haired girl in jeans and a peasant blouse, her voice shaking as she stammered helplessly, "I didn't mean it!"

"What's said," another remembered voice replied, "Is said."

Words, Sarah was remembering, had power. That was also in the book. What was said was said, and could not be taken back simply because you had changed your mind.

Her voice, when she finally spoke, was very quiet.

> "'In Life's name, and for Life's sake, I say that I will use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life. I will fight to guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so -- until Universe's end.'"

***

The aggravating portion of being a Senior, Carl decided, was the same aggravation that troubled management everywhere: the paperwork.

He had decided this before, but every time he checked the status and potential of a new wizard he made up his mind about it all over again, especially when the new names came up at ten o'clock at night when he'd been working out a late-night ad.

Then he looked more closely at WILLIAMS, SARAH, her age, her prospective power rating, and the Ordeal note next to her name (visible to Senior-level only), and he let out a quiet whistle. "Tom?"

His partner poked his head out of the kitchen, flour on his nose and an aggrieved expression on his face. "Yes?"

"The Powers just called a sixteen-year-old. There's a request for backup on her Ordeal."

Tom blinked, then he nodded and waved his hands in a quick gesture. "Give me ten minutes to finish the prep work for this spell and I'll come see."

Carl turned back to his manual, his eyes narrowed as he tried to get a sense of just what the Powers were up to this time.

Ordeals didn't normally get backup; not every potential wizard took the Oath, and of the ones that did not all of them were really cut out for wizardry. The Ordeal was designed to be a solo test, just the novice wizard against the Lone One in some form. There were always exceptions, like the pair of wizards that came to him and Tom for Advising, Nita and Kit, but even they had run into each other at least nominally accidentally. Accidentally, indeed, he thought with a snort. There were rarely true accidents in wizardry. For the Powers to request assistance for her before her Ordeal had even started... what would make that necessary?

His manual suddenly grew a little bit thicker as information began to appear next to Sarah Williams' name. Carl read, and his eyebrow notched a little higher as he did.

Tom, coming in to lean warm and flour-smelling over his shoulder, whistled softly in Carl's ear. "Firebrand before she was called, huh?"

"Looks like it."

The Goblin King didn't come up in most manuals. Wizards under the Advisory level, for instance, would probably assume you were only discussing a fairy tale. One of the harder things for wizards to get used to -- and it usually took until they weren't younger wizards any more -- was the fact that wizardry wasn't the only magic out there. Like this piece. He was an example of entropy made manifest from humans; the only relation he had to the Lone Power was coming about because of Its invention of death. If a wizard happened to run into the Goblin King while on her normal business, it was her duty to aid anyone attempting to recover what he had taken, but other than that interference was banned. Their style of magic couldn't solve everything. Wizardry needed wizards, and part of being a wizard was knowing when the Art was appropriate, and when it wasn't.

That was the other hard thing to get used to, once a wizard did know something about him. The Goblin King wasn't evil. He did what humans had made him to do -- the Goblin King took nothing that was not offered to him and always gave a chance for retrieval.

The Goblin King wasn't evil. He wasn't even bad. Every species, Carl knew, needed predators. Humans had just created their own.

But Sarah Williams had wished away her little brother, and then she had not just gone after him, she'd beaten the Goblin King at his own game. That was the weird part, when the prey won.

Which, now that Carl thought about it for a little while, was a very good explanation for why the Powers called her late. If she'd managed something like that all on her own... she would probably turn out to be a really good wizard.

"Somebody young," Tom said thoughtfully, resting his chin on Carl's shoulder as he talked, still looking over at the manual and its information. "She'll need somebody with the oomph she doesn't have."

"Dairine?" Carl suggested their own young firebrand, one of the most powerful wizards anyone had seen -- on Earth or off it -- for quite some time. Especially with her planet of mobile computer wizards to call on, if she needed the extra help. Between the mobiles and Dairine herself, not much could stand in their way. "Might distract her from Wellakh."

Tom shook his head, dark hair brushing over Carl's cheek lightly. "Too fiery. They wouldn't work well together, I think, and she wouldn't appreciate the distraction. Kit's steady, and not much older than Dairine. He could use a distraction from Ponch."

"Kit won't go without Nita," Carl pointed out. "They work better as a unit, anyway. And they could use the rest of an Ordeal that doesn't involve the Lone One as personally." Why the Powers had decided Sarah Williams would face the Goblin King again, rather than the Lone One head-on as was normal, Carl didn't know, and didn't want to. That wasn't his job, thank the Powers; he looked after what They sent him and They handled Their part.

Tom nodded against his shoulder, but his voice was slow and wary. "That One will probably show up anyway. You know It; It probably thinks this is a great chance to deal with a wizard before she has time to grow into what the Powers think she could be."

"Another good reason for Kit and Nita," Carl pointed out, and his smile was sharp. "They've gotten good at pulling victories out of places we wouldn't expect." He didn't mention the Song, and how stunned he'd been to see Kit _and_ Nita come out of the water, where only Kit should have been. If he'd been willing to let her die alone... which Carl wasn't always certain he could be, even at the times he should be willing. There were moments Kit and Nita worried him.

He tried, often, not to think about what might be coming for Nita that a Power manifesting as the Master Shark had died for her. Not simply in the Lone One's spite, but for Nita. That was always the Master Shark's role, to spite the Lone One simply by... being the predator it was, but it should have taken Nita's sacrifice. Carl didn't want to think about what Nita's life was going to be like, if a Power like the Unfallen Destroyer had thought her important enough to dis-incarnate for.

Tom nodded again, more firmly. "They don't have anything active going on right now. I'll call Nita and tell her to grab Kit."

"Okay," Carl said absently, looking again at Sarah Williams' description in the manual. Something was niggling at him, and Carl had been a wizard long enough to know when to listen to the things the Powers couldn't tell you directly.

Something was still bothering him about this, but Carl wouldn't figure it out right now. Whatever it was could wait a little while, at least long enough for his subconscious to listen a little better. "Give it 'til morning, Tom. The Powers will give her a little time to get used to this first."

***

Sarah woke up the next morning with a headache from sleeping wrongly. When she checked her windows, they were still latched, and when she moved silently to Toby's room, peeking in, she could see Toby's blond hair gleaming from the child's bed he was coming close to outgrowing.

She took a careful breath and went back to her room to see if she'd imagined things.

Holding the book in her lap, a little thicker than it had been last night, Sarah said aloud, "What's said is said," her voice firm, and flipped it open to the registry of wizards.

WILLIAMS, SARAH it said in bold font, listing her address and phone number. NOVICE, PRE-RATING.

"So," she murmured to the room, a habit of talking to herself and the world around her that she had never outgrown. "I guess that means there's an Ordeal coming. Well. It can't be harder than Jareth."

Then Sarah remembered a little of the history the book had mentioned, about a Lone Power who bound death into the worlds and was cast out for it, and the war between It and the other Powers, and she said quietly, "Or. Well. Maybe it can."

Sarah put the book on her dresser, turning to look into her mirror, looking automatically for faces that weren't there.

She hadn't done this since she came back from the Labyrinth. She hadn't needed them, and -- Sarah would admit this to herself, even if not to anyone else -- she was worried about attracting Jareth's attention. But right now, with this familiar feeling in her skull and drawing in around her like the world was listening to her (and would send goblins for her brother), she needed to talk to her friends. So she turned her gaze to the mirror. "I need you, Hoggle," she said, looking for his face in the reflection of her room. "Ludo? Sir Didymus? I need you."

She said the words as though they were an invocation, and as though the concept of the people she was calling not appearing simply didn't occur to her.

The mirror did not ripple, or change, or do any of the things that an observer might have reasonably thought it ought to do when an incantation was said into it. The girl in the mirror, and then the girl in the room, simply suddenly had company behind her.

Sarah grinned, tension fading out of her as she spun around and crouched to hug her friend tight. "Hoggle!"

"Sawah!" Ludo bellowed cheerfully, nearly covering Didymus' howl of "My Lady!" as Ludo picked her up off the floor with one massive furred arm. For a moment, he'd lifted Hoggle too -- but he'd quickly let go.

She laughed, more relaxed than she could remember being in weeks, and buried her face in his orange chest, wrapping her arms up around his neck. "Ludo! It's so good to see you!" She took a moment of feeling fourteen again, safe in Ludo's uncomplicated affection, before she poked his shoulder with a fingertip. "I need to get back down, though."

Ludo rumbled a complaint, but he put Sarah down. She shook her shirt free of his long hair, then reached to pet Ambrosius -- so much like her Merlin -- hugging Didymus with her other arm. "I'm so glad you came," she said quietly, murmuring the words into Didymus' fur. "I'm so, so glad you came."

Hoggle's touch to her hair was light and gentle. "Said we'd come if you needed us. Guess you do."

Sarah nodded silently, the enormity of what she had invoked last night suddenly feeling as though it would drown her. She didn't regret taking the Oath -- it wasn't anything someone like Jareth would try to trick her into. There hadn't been any tricks at all, with the book. No tricks and no illusions, and tricks and illusions were what Sarah had gotten good at dealing with. She would have recognized those. "I do. I do need you."

"Fair maiden," Didymus said gently -- Sarah had been expecting brashness from the fox-knight, not this quiet certainty -- "Anything you need from us, we will give."

Sarah took a breath and lifted her head to look at them. "I'm a wizard."

None of them argued that that wasn't possible, or expressed any surprise at all, really. Hoggle just tilted his head curiously. "You weren't when you were in the Labyrinth."

"No. I wasn't." Sarah got off the floor, sitting on the bed and lifting Didymus with her to sit in her lap. Hoggle clambered up to sit next to them, while Ludo sat on the floor, head level with Sarah's. She shifted, leaning her head on Hoggle's shoulder while she talked. "I found this book. So You Want to be a Wizard. And I... read the Oath that was there. 'In Life's name, and for Life's sake... '" She didn't complete the sentence, closing her eyes, suddenly unaccountably tired.

"Do you regret it?" Didymus asked quietly, his fur brushing her chin when he lifted his head to look in her eyes.

Sarah shook her head, Hoggle's vest cool on her forehead. "No. I don't. I'm just scared."

"When I became a knight, I was afraid." Didymus' voice was oddly distant and quiet as he spoke. "I was afraid I would dishonor my crest. My family. I was afraid I would stain the name of knighthood. I was afraid I would be a coward."

"You aren't a coward," Sarah murmured, only barely hearing the odd slur to her words, her eyes still shut, yawning faintly when Hoggle started stroking her hair lightly.

"No, my Lady. I am not. But I might have been." Didymus' nose was cold on her jaw. "Nor are you. You have nothing to fear, my Lady -- did you not defeat Jareth himself? Did you not fulfill your quest?"

Sarah nodded, blinking her eyes open against the sleep that wanted to fall. "Yes. This just... might be harder."

"But you have sworn an oath, my Lady."

"Yeah," Sarah admitted. "I have." With them, Hoggle and Didymus and Ludo, Sarah knew it was just that simple. She'd sworn an Oath. Now to do her best to keep it.

"Tired, Sawah?"

"A little," she answered, knowing it was more than that but unwilling to see them go.

"Looks like more than a little to me," Hoggle said softly, still stroking her hair. "Should we leave?"

"No," Sarah replied, shutting her eyes again. "Will you stay a little longer?"

"Sure, Sawah," Ludo rumbled, petting her cheek carefully with one huge hand.

Sarah smiled sleepily, letting the rest of her tension go, and drifted off with Hoggle's hand on her hair.

***

She opened her eyes to pale stone and rainbows that shimmered around her. For a long moment, lying on sun-warmed cobbles and watching the rainbows dance, Sarah was happy.

Then it occurred to her where she was likely to _be_ and a rush of adrenaline propelled her to her feet, spinning and nearly stumbling, to look at Jareth's inscrutable face, fear blazing up in her. She took a breath that clogged in her lungs, but she managed to push out, "My will -- "

"Hush," Jareth interrupted softly, and Sarah went silent, though she barely knew why. It wasn't as though listening to him had ever gained her much. But his voice was strangely quiet, different than she'd ever heard it... why was he different? He smiled a little at her, the triangle of crystals in his hands continuing to dance rainbows in the room with the sun shining down on them as he spun them over and around his fingers. "You aren't here for that, Sarah. The words won't work."

Which was logic Sarah could understand; she hadn't wished anyone away. She wouldn't do that sort of thing again. She glanced around the room, noting that she hadn't been here before. High up in the castle, the lack of a roof left the room open to the breeze and the sun, the Labyrinth spread out wide and bright beneath them. "If I'm not here for that, why am I here?"

For a long moment, all she heard was the wind and the nearly noiseless clink of Jareth's crystals. Then, finally, he spoke. "You're a wizard now, Sarah?"

Her fists clenched at the idle tone of his voice, at the casual proof that he had still been keeping an eye on her.... "Yes."

She heard him move before he spoke again, quiet rustle of leather on leather and the sound of the crystals still turning over his hands, quietly clicking together and brushing against the gloves, as he came to stand beside her. He stepped into her vision, leaning hip-shot against the balustrade, and she could feel the weight of him looking down at her with his bi-color eyes. "What made you decide to do such a reckless thing?"

Sarah didn't look at him, glancing away to focus on the Labyrinth. "I was thinking about fairness. Why?"

"You're not the little girl that wailed to me about unfairness anymore, Sarah," he said, quiet acceptance and something else shading through his voice. "And whatever made you think a wizard's life would be any more fair?"

Sarah snorted, lowering her head to hide her smirk behind her hair. "I didn't. It was just the right thing to do."

She could hear the rustle as his hair rasped against the collar of his vest when he shook his head. "You made the Choice, it can't be un-made... but be careful, Sarah.

"You will meet worse things than me, now."

She was silent for a moment, stilling -- he sounded calm, and she was used to that, but underneath was a flicker of anger and a shadow of worry (why was he worried? Why was he angry?) -- then she lifted her head to the sun, looking up into its ruddy brightness. "I know. I'm supposed to be having an Ordeal soon." That _he_ had admitted she would meet worse things than him... Sarah didn't want to know what those things would be, though she knew that sooner or later she would find out.

"That is the way of things," he said after another few moments, quiet and almost solemn. "I wonder what They will find for you, who faced me already."

Sarah shrugged. "When I woke up this morning and saw that it was real, I told myself it couldn't be harder than you. Then I thought about it." There was still a piece of her that thought nothing was worse than Jareth, all his casual power and easy arrogance. Most of her knew better, now.

"I will take the compliment for what it is worth," Jareth said, a low chuckle in his voice beside her. "And at least you have learned to think about such careless statements."

Sarah huffed out a sigh through her nostrils, ignoring his amusement at her. That wasn't new, but she still hated it. "How much longer am I going to be asleep?"

"As long as you wish to be, I suppose. Nothing holds you in sleep, now."

Sarah wasn't really as surprised by that as part of her thought she should be. Jareth hadn't had the chance to give her anything, and. And she just wasn't that surprised. "Oh."

He tipped his head, gesture as avian as one of his forms, and asked, his voice ever so casual, lighter than she had ever heard it, "Oh?"

"Oh," Sarah repeated, turning her head to look at him, and there was quiet for long moments, not a sound but the rush of the wind through the stones, before he spoke again.

"Do you want to wake up, Sarah?"

There was something odd about his expression, Sarah thought, and couldn't place what it was. He'd been being odd all through this conversation, really. "Not really."

That drew a smile to his lips -- not the cynical smirk, or the dangerously edged _look_ he wore when he wanted to be amused and couldn't, quite -- but a smile that was strangely small, yet reflected up in his eyes. "Good." He looked out for a moment, his eyes turning bright as his smile sharpened with pleasure, and he gestured with one casual motion, crystals balanced on the other hand. "Look out there... the hedges are migrating."

Sarah turned her gaze to the Labyrinth spread out under them, blinking when she spotted the, yes, walking hedges, a wave of moving dark over the ground. "There used to be a dead end there... " she said quietly, reminiscently. "I suppose that explains a lot about this place."

"Nothing is as it seems in this place," he agreed, watching the hedges rustle their way slowly across the ground, all crawling roots and waving sprigs of branches, smiling as they made their way elsewhere. He wondered to himself if someone would soon be making a wish. The larger movements of the Labyrinth were normally warnings that another mortal was about to try to be rid of a burden they felt unable to hold.

"Do they do this every day?" Sarah watched them nervously as she asked.

"Not every day, no. Though something is always in motion."

"It never stands still. Doesn't that ever get tiring?"

"It would be more tiring if it didn't move. Boring and static and dead, just... walls and halls and nothing real? No, thank you." His mouth was creased with the distaste he felt for that idea, and his voice was sharp.

"Things aren't dead just because you can't see them move," Sarah argued, still watching the hedges wave in the sunshine, all bright green shimmers from the leaves and dark shadows from the trunks...

"The Labyrinth would be," Jareth replied shortly. "Other places can have their still walls and their unmoving walks."

She had to admit he had a point: this was the Labyrinth's own way, and it grew well. She didn't like the place, couldn't entirely look at the hedges without remembering her own frustration and rising panic, but she could admit its boisterous, cheery insistence on its own life was beautiful, in its fashion.

Jareth smiled again as she stopped arguing with him and just watched the hedges as they seemed to reach a consensus that they had found the right new place -- and then began to nudge the walls further apart with impatient brushes against them.

"They're moving the walls?" Sarah asked in amazement, laughing a little as she stared down in disbelief. "No wonder I had such a hard time with this place without Hoggle."

Jareth couldn't help laughing with her, his smile changing into something bright with... what was that? at the incredulous pleasure on her face. "They can be very... insistent on the proper distances between them. Apparently the walls are too close, this time. And what would be new about rock yielding to plant?" He paused for long moments, then spoke again, ruefully. "Now, they do know not to try that with the oldest walls, the inner ones. That was a bad few days before they learned better..."

"The walls are grumbling about it," she answered promptly. "And they aren't... breaking, that's what's new. They're just moving." She tilted her head up at him, looking at that brilliant, almost... happy? smile on his face. She had seen Jareth smiling before, generally when she was making a mistake. She had never seen him smile without that edge of malice. "What happened with those?"

"Their foundations run all the way down to the False Alarms. _They_ don't care to move for any plant. It took five of the goblins to settle _that_ mess, before it was all said and done."

She hadn't expected to get an answer, and wasn't entirely sure why he had told her. She was even less sure if she was glad she had, or more uneasy. Jareth didn't answer questions, he just told more riddles. "Hm. The False Alarms... they like their job, don't they?"

"They do. They were quite pleased you'd gotten yourself down there. It had been a long time since anyone came through the tunnels."

She looked away from him, back over the sprawl of the Labyrinth. "I'm glad I had help with them. I might've listened if I hadn't."

"You might have. You might not have. And you might have found another way, if you had turned back."

"Would I have done it in time?" Her voice was serious, and she shifted again to lean against the balustrade, looking at him.

He thought about it, flipping a crystal back and forth over his hand as he did, and after a small stretch of time, he replied. "... possibly. You're very inventive."

"But possibly not, because I... take things for granted."

"Yes," he agreed, his voice calm. "Or you did, then. Now? You seem better about that."

"After I met you, I worked on it." Sarah wrinkled her nose. "I didn't realize how much the world worked off taking things for granted."

"I'm glad I could be useful, then." His voice was had that same kind of rueful tone as he smiled over at her again. "But of course it does, Sarah."

She closed her eyes, leaning her head back into empty space, sunlight glowing red through her eyelids. Looking at that was easier than looking at the way he smiled... why did he look like that? "It makes life easy. Taking things for granted. And when you're wrong, it's never your fault. God, I was a coward when I was fourteen."

"No. No coward would have beaten me. Child, yes. Foolish and careless. But not cowardly."

She opened her eyes reflexively at the unexpected heat in his voice, flinching away from the sun in her eyes, bringing up one hand to shield her face. "... Thanks."

"Only truth," he said with a slow shrug, as if shaking off her words.

Sarah eyed him from beneath her makeshift visor, wondering what on earth he was thinking, then moved again to watch the Labyrinth, dropping her hand now that the sun wasn't in her eyes. "Why do you do this?"

"Do what?"

"Rule the Labyrinth. Take children. ... Talk to me."

"I am what I was made to be," he shrugged, dismissing that as if not worth another moment's attention, then smiled slyly after a little stretch of time, answering the rest of her question. "I talk to you because I want to. You are a rarity, Sarah." He paused, and spoke again a moment later. "And because you listen, I suppose."

"I'm not that special," she said automatically, shutting up the part of her that was still fourteen and thought she was, then rewound the conversation. "Don't the goblins listen? And -- _made_?"

"Goblins are many things, but good conversationalists they aren't. Well, most of them. And then, I am their King."

"You mean you don't like listening to people calling you 'Majesty' all day?" Sarah had meant it as a joke, but the comment came out bitter, and hearing her words hang in the air between them she wondered how much of a joke she'd really meant to make.

Jareth's lips skinned back from his teeth for a long moment, before he took a breath and answered her evenly. "It has its perks."

Sarah glanced away from him, and the book's words about entropy -- about the wizardly ways of decreasing it, and the non-wizardly ways of speeding it up -- flickered in her head. Sarah had always had a pretty good memory for lines, and what was in her head now was entropy fed by emotion. By people being bitter, or hateful. "... Sorry."

"Don't worry about it, Sarah. You have reason, after all."

"It was petty, and you haven't done anything to deserve it. This time," she added. "Yet," she finished.

Jareth chuckled quietly, nodding once. "This time, indeed."

"Why am I in the Labyrinth?" If he was going to be so obliging, she was going to keep asking questions. And not think too hard about whatever his reasons were. Jareth was... not useful, was not obliging, did not answer her questions, and why was he changing that now?

"Because I heard you call to it... and because now you're a wizard, so they're going to send you on Ordeal. People die that way."

"Couldn't I have died here?"

It seemed to take a moment for him to answer her. "Did you believe you could?"

Sarah shook her head. "I still thought it was a story, at first. Until the oubliette. The brave heroine never dies in the story."

Jareth's voice was... careful, as he answered. Slow and cautious. "Mmm... not in modern children's fiction, certainly."

"But she used to."

"Those aren't the stories that people like to tell, though." He was either agreeing with her obliquely, or just stating another fact. She was more inclined to believe the second, actually.

"No. I think I liked the stories where she didn't die better. But they're not true."

"Well, they _are_... they just aren't all of the truth, either."

"I'm here because people die on Ordeal?" She glanced at him, even more confused by that than anything else he had said yet. "Why would that bother you?"

Jareth gave her a long, odd look, as if he was quietly waiting to see if she would put it together herself; then shook his head at her. "If you don't know, why would I tell you?"

"Because I listen." She had known that sooner or later he would stop being obliging; she wished he had waited until he'd answered _this_ question, the core of the rest of them. Why would Jareth care that Sarah was a wizard, why would he care that she would meet worse things than him, why would he care that people died on Ordeal and she might be one of them?

Jareth had terrified Sarah when she was fourteen, an otherwordly apparition gleaming black and glittering silver, and he had never quite stopped terrifying her even though she had only seen him since then in her nightmares. A friendly conversation with him had not been high on her list of probable ways to ever spend her time, and he... had not once been threatening this time. Had not once been anything other than the "kind" he had called himself back then.

She didn't understand, and Sarah hated that. Things were supposed to work the way she expected them to. What was he _planning_?

He laughed at that, tossing his head back with true humor as he did. When had she learned to read his moods so well, Sarah wondered, that she could tell the difference? "Clever girl. Yes, you do... except when you don't."

Sarah raised an eyebrow, turning again and crossing her arms. "Oh?"

"Mm... if you listened -- or remembered -- you would know..." He looked sideways for a moment. "That dog of yours wants your attention, I think." His voice was wry, almost playful... and faintly, she heard a yip that did not come from the room around them.

Sarah blinked. "Merlin? He's not here -- "

She stirred, irrationally cold, and yelped when a wet nose touched her ear. "Didy -- oh, Merlin, it's you." Sitting up in her own bed, she said, "I'm awake already, huh?"

Reaching to rub at his shaggy ears, Sarah continued musing aloud. "He heard you before I did. It was my dream, and he heard you before I did. I wonder why... "

Sarah knew herself to be the sort of girl who talked to her pets and her stuffed animals and anything else that she wanted to, and they generally talked back. Merlin had been talking to her for years.

She had never heard Merlin say anything quite so prosaic as, "He was probably paying more attention," in a series of yips and quiet barks.

Sarah blinked, startled before she considered the matter. "Well. The book did _say_ I could hear what a plant was thinking. I suppose talking to you is par for the course."

"Yes. You hear me now!" Merlin agreed, wagging everything from his ears back with the pleasure of it.

Sarah smiled. "You were always talking, huh, Merlin?"

"Yes! ...you were good at guessing, before. No guesses now. You hear for real! ... scratch? Ears itch," he added, misery in the roll of his eyes up and the hunch of his shoulders.

Sarah scratched, focusing on the base on Merlin's ears, wishing for a minute her nails were longer so that she could really get the itch that liked to live there, before reminding herself how impractical that would be. "Better?"

"Yes!!!" Again, his entire body wagged.

"How does a walk sound? The park." She wanted to study the book, after running with Merlin to clear her head, and she had always done better studying in the sunshine, away from other distractions.

And the last time she had seen an owl in daylight, it had been in the park. She'd wondered later if it had been Jareth, and had stayed out of the park for a month, just in case. She was sure, now, that it had been.

Merlin _bounced_ energetically, even his nose getting in on the wag of "yes, yesyesyes!!!"

Sarah had to laugh at Merlin's obvious glee. "Give me fifteen minutes, Merlin." Just long enough to tie her hair back and put her shoes back on. It was still bright outside, despite her nap after seeing her friends again. Maybe it hadn't lasted as long as she thought -- and then again, she had gotten up pretty early. She didn't normally sleep the whole day away.

"Walk! Walk walk walk," he barked, then went to bump the door open and thump down the stairs.

Sarah grinned, shaking her head, then reached for her brush. Sometimes she thought seriously about cutting her hair, mostly when she was brushing it after waking up. Today was not one of those times, as it ended up only taking her ten minutes to finish, then she raced downstairs to grab her shoes and Merlin's leash and head for the park.

***

Tom had still been the one who ended up calling Nita, though he had given it until ten that morning in deference to how hard she had worked against the Pullulus. In Tom's view, she had earned at least one morning of sleeping in before the Powers called her in for backup.

  
Which didn't make it any less exasperating to have to wait for her to pick up.

"Callahan residence, Dairine, whoever you are calling on a Saturday had better make it good." Their young firebrand had apparently reached the phone first.

"Put your sister on the phone," Tom replied, amused at the behavior of even wizarding preteens and teenagers as he pulled the phone away from his ear -- before the yell he knew was coming could deafen him.

"NITA! Tom's on the phone!"

"I'm COMING," Nita bellowed back in the distance, before her much quieter voice came clearly through the phone. "Hi, Tom."

"Hi, Nita. Grab your partner and come over, we've got something that might need you."

Nita's voice was a little wary. "Is this the sort of something that means we can walk, or should we get there a little faster?"

"Don't break spacetime," Tom advised wryly, "but you might want to put a hustle on it."

"Gotcha. Give us ten minutes; I'll run interference with Carmela so Kit can get moving. He's still asleep," she added with the easy knowledge of a wizarding partner, bringing another smile to his lips. They were a good team.

"See you in ten," Tom agreed, and hung back up.

Nita grabbed the toast she had planned on savoring, shoved her shoes on, and ran out the door yelling over her shoulder, "Tell Dad I'm with Kit!"

"Sure!" Dairine yelled back as the door slammed.

She shoved the toast in her mouth as she ran, taking enough time to swallow her last bite before she knocked on Kit's door. Mrs. Rodriguez opened the door, shaking her head as she recognized her, and the signs of hurry. "You'd be wanting Kit, then." She turned her head towards the stairs, holding the door open for Nita as she called, " _Niño_!"

Nita grinned up at her, breathing a little hard. "Yeah. Thanks." She had to stifle the urge to ask where Ponch was -- it had been so recent, Nita still expected to hear the explosion of barks as Ponch headed her way.

It wasn't but a minute before Kit was at the door, blinking as he saw Nita standing there... or possibly just at the brightness of the light coming in the open door, given that his hair was still a mess from sleep and he was in an oversized T and basketball shorts. "If you'da called, I'd be more with it... hi, Neets."

"I wanted breakfast. Besides, I wouldn't want to miss the approach of the Hair Monster."

"You're not funny," Kit told her sourly as he turned around to head back up. "What brings you this early?"

"Tom has something for us."

"This quick?" Kit asked, twisting around on the stairs to look back at her. "Have _I_ got time for breakfast?"

"I ate a piece of toast on the run," Nita admitted. "And I told Tom ten minutes about four minutes ago."

"Mama, is ther -- "

"I will get food for you, and you too, Juanita," his mother replied, vanishing into the kitchen. "That man, giving you no time to prepare..."

" _Gracias_ , mama," Kit said before he vanished into his room.

Nita took a minute to be very, very grateful to the Powers for Kit's mother and her tendencies to feed people. She also took a minute to sit back down on the couch while she waited for Kit.

He came back down in real clothes and his hair tamed into its current-usual slicked-back fall, and wrapped an arm around his mother when she came out with morning tortillas for them both. Nita eyed her share hungrily. One piece of toast, her stomach was telling her in no uncertain terms, was not good enough next to Mrs. Rodriguez' food. Her conscience was telling her they were going to be late unless they really, really hurried.

Kit held the plate out to her, arching a brow as he said something with his mouth full that she only understood, because she knew him very well, to be, "eat, you need it."

Nita shot him a half-hearted glare even while she was grabbing her fair share and bolting them down.

"Awright," Kit said as he finished off his share and slung the bag of his usual gear over his shoulder. "Let's go."

"It shouldn't be anything too big," Nita said, to ease the worried look on Mrs. Rodriguez' face. "I mean, I haven't heard of anything major, and I think the Powers are still trying to take it easy on us after the last thing."

"We'll be fine, mama," Kit said as he ducked back to kiss his mother's cheek, then headed out the door into the back yard. They both knew the transit spell by heart, and the coordinates for Tom and Carl's were almost engraved on the backs of their hands, as many times as they'd used them. They still double-checked each other's parts of the spell diagram, quick but thorough, and then started the active spell, feeling it as the universe listened to them... then did what they'd asked it to do.

They landed in the back yard, and Nita still beat Kit out of the circle and to Tom and Carl's door, grinning a little painfully when Annie started barking and tore around the edge of the house.

Kit's eyes closed for a second before he shook the flare of grief off and followed her in, running his hand over Annie's head as Tom came up and got Annie off of him and snapped his fingers at Monty, who promptly turned and jumped up on Nita, slobbering all over her hand.

"You made good time," their Senior said as he pulled the dogs off Nita too, shooing them both away before they went through the doors. "C'mon, Carl's in here."

"Hey, Carl," Nita and Kit chorused in unison, wandering in to sit down. Oddly for one of their appearances in the Seniors' house, Carl wasn't tinkering with some piece of machinery -- and doing it badly -- which meant either that this was very serious, or that Tom had threatened him with something dire if he messed with one more thing this week. "What do They want?" Nita asked.

"Carl, you found this one..." Tom said, willing to yield the floor to his partner.

Carl nodded, glancing at Kit and Nita. "The Powers want you to be backup for an Ordeal."

Kit's startled "Us?" was overrun by Nita's incredulous "Backup? What, we're specializing in that now?"

Tom had to admit that Nita had a point. Between her sister, Darryl, and some other events in their careers, it did almost seem like they were getting a lot of the really strange Ordeals. "This wizard is older than most. We thought you two would be a good match for her, give her a little more power than she has."

"How old is older?" Kit asked, tipping his head to the side.

"Sixteen."

Kit didn't complain aloud, but the 'aw, man,' was written all over his face, and Nita was sure of why. He complained enough about dealing with his older sisters -- a strange teenage girl going through Ordeal was probably about as high on his list of fun things to deal with as a root canal. Not that she really dealt a lot better with the older boys in school...

"They called her at that age?" Nita asked instead of saying any of that, both genuinely curious and trying to get their attention away from Kit's rueful expression. Most of the wizards who went on Ordeal were anywhere from twelve to fourteen -- even the extra year of fifteen cost a wizard in power. Nita had never personally heard of someone being called at sixteen -- at least, not a human person. And she was pretty sure that in most of the other species she normally worked with, the early-teens equivalent was still the more usual age. Every species grew more jaded, less willing to believe, as they aged. But that was one of the traits humans in particular were known for.

"Yeah," Tom nodded. "She had a run-in with one of the... odder entities in our part of reality at a little over the age you took the Oath, Nita."

"Not a servant of the Lone One?" Nita really hoped the answer wasn't yes: she couldn't imagine dealing with Its minions as personally as it sounded like this girl had when she hadn't even been a wizard.

"... not so far as anyone's ever been able to prove. And believe me, more than a few wizards have tried." Tom's voice was threaded with some other emotion as he spoke. "No, 'just' a manifestation of human fear."

Nita blinked, cocking her head to the side. "Run this one by me again?"

"Check your manual," Kit told her, already flipping through his, trusting it to find what he needed to know.

"He won't be in there," Carl told them. "Unless the Powers decided you needed the information in ways we couldn't tell you."

Kit's hand froze as he looked up. "What's not in the Manual?"

"... Things the Powers don't think wizards under a certain level need to know," Tom answered slowly, as if wondering what Kit was thinking. "Wizards have lost their magic before, thanks to finding out about things like him too early."

"Well yeah, Tom," Kit sighed. "I do know it's normally only got what we need to know, but if we're getting sent at something like that..." The young wizard looked at his senior worriedly. "And if it's not in here, are you two really supposed to tell us?"

Carl and Tom looked at each other. "I'm not sending them out against him without at least explaining what he does," Carl said finally. "Whether he's in their manuals or not."

Tom nodded after another fraction of a second. "I'm with you there."

Nita looked at Kit, raising an eyebrow. When Tom and Carl talked with that tone in their voices, Nita had learned to be worried. Kit looked back at her, his dark eyes just as concerned, and waited for their Seniors to start talking to _them_ again.

"You aren't going up against the Lone One," Carl said abruptly. "You aren't even going up against one of Its servants. The Powers have decided that Sarah Williams' ordeal is a rematch with the Goblin King."

"The what now?" Kit asked blankly, glancing at his partner to share a confused look.

But Nita... Nita was sitting completely still. "... you can't mean what I think you do. He can't be real..."

"You've _heard_ of this?" Kit asked, looking at her, seeing... fear? in her expression. That worried him even more than Tom and Carl's tension, He knew very well what it took to make Neets afraid, and he couldn't figure how whatever they were talking about could pull it off if it wasn't even from that One.

One of Tom's dark brows arched just as much as Kit's had, then he looked at his partner. Sometimes the Powers were really not subtle.

Nita shook her head and started to talk to Kit. "When I was a kid, I found this book called _Labyrinth_. The main character was a princess who had accidentally wished away her little sister and had to run the Labyrinth to get her back. The ruler of it was the Goblin King. I remember having nightmares about that place before my mother convinced me that nobody was going to wish me away, and the goblins couldn't get me if nobody wished me there." Her mouth quirked. "I thought about wishing Dairine away a couple times."

"Thank the Powers you _didn't_ , Nita!" Carl's voice practically snapped with the sincerity in it. He didn't want to even think about what would have happened if Dairine Callahan had never had the chance to take up wizardry. He'd had more discussions with interplanetary Seniors in the last year than he had in most of his career, but she was worth every minute of the hassle just for the result of her Ordeal. The Lone Power had taken the opportunity for redemption her Ordeal had offered, even though from Carl's perspective in time the reverberations were still ongoing... and that was worth more than anyone could say.

Nita slumped slightly, looking up at her Seniors as she tried -- very, very hard -- not to think about what her mother would have said if she had. "I didn't want to run the Labyrinth. And I knew I couldn't just leave her there."

"Well. Our new novice wished her brother away... then ran the Labyrinth and won. That's happened... not even a handful of times since he appeared -- that someone won, we mean."

Nita stared at them. "She _won_?"

Tom nodded. "She won. And now she has to face him again... we don't know how that's going to start."

"Can someone explain to me why this is so weird to believe?" Kit asked wryly. "So he's a goblin. We've dealt with way worse than a goblin."

"He's not going to be real susceptible to our kind of magic, Kit," Carl said. "We're normally forbidden to interfere with him."

"What?" Nita's voice was sharp, incredulous. "He takes people's _kids_. Why can't we deal with that?"

"Nita... _how_ does he take them?" Tom asked, looking at her with compassion in his dark eyes as he waited for her to think through it.

"People... oh." Nita sighed, "People wish them away."

Carl nodded slowly, agreeing with her. "Their choice... which is what makes him so dangerous. That and, like I said, he isn't part of our kind of magic."

"What kind of magic is he?" Kit asked sceptically.

That drew a long sigh from Carl and a shake of Tom's head before he answered. "You ran in Tir na nOg, Kit. He's _myth_."

Nita's head jerked in a sharp nod as she thought it through. "He's a legend. A story. He's just been around for a while -- he's as much a person as we are, by now, probably. Every time that story gets told, it probably makes him more real. Wizardry might not affect him, but we can still use the Speech, right?"

Carl tossed a pleased look and a small flick of a casual salute Nita's way. "There's not a lot of information on his realm, because we're not supposed to interfere. What we do know is it's... more alive than most places. And it's not kind. Be cautious, both of you."

If she could still use the Speech, she'd be all right, Nita told herself, and was pretty sure she was lying at least a little.

"How ba -- " Kit shut up at the look Nita was giving him. "All right, all right."

"How bad was the Lone One's alternate world?" Tom asked quietly.

Kit flinched at the question, at the memories it stirred up, but his head cocked as he kept talking. "You said we aren't dealing with It, though. Maybe I'm just being thick, but I don't see how something that's not even part of It could be worse."

"We can use every wizard we can _get_. You two know that. And the Powers still gave her over a year to put herself back together after she ran the Labyrinth. I'm not saying it's worse, Kit. Don't get me wrong. I am saying you shouldn't be too cocky. You two have won a lot of battles. That doesn't mean you'll win every time," Tom answered, softly enough that Nita had to strain to hear him.

Kit took a slow breath, then nodded his understanding of what Tom was trying to get through to him. "Overconfidence is stupid. Gotcha."

"We don't know if you can die in the Labyrinth, Kit." Carl had apparently decided to back up the lesson. "We don't know how wizardry behaves there. Most people don't run it, and almost no one wins it. The Goblin King is in our manuals, but even we don't have a lot of information on his kingdom."

Kit nodded again, letting the warning sink in. "All right. So, do we get her name now?"

"Sarah Williams. She should be in your manuals, too -- we don't expect her Ordeal to start immediately," Tom added. "The Powers normally give most wizards a little time to get used to the concept of wizardry. But I would feel better if you three met sooner rather than later."

"... I had what, three days? Kit, you had... a week? Dair -- well." Nita's eyes were sharp, but her voice was amused. "She has to do _everything_ weird, but I'm with you on not taking that chance, Tom."

"According to my manual," Carl put in, "Right now our novice is in Brother Bryant Park. The address is listed, so you can jump there." He looked up, and his eyes were sober. "You two are already listed as auxiliary on Ordeal. She isn't listed as on Ordeal yet, but I imagine from yours it will start soon."

"We're on it, Carl. And we'll be careful," Kit added after a second. "Neets, you have anything you want to grab?"

Nita shook her head. She didn't want to rely too much on wizardry -- besides, most of her big spells she carried the tools for. Just in case. Some of them were in her charm bracelet cache, at home, but those were for specialty spells, not the kind of thing she'd need right now.

"Me either. See you when we see you, Tom, Carl." Kit stood up, stretching.

It was easier for Nita to convince herself that this didn't worry her when Kit seemed so nonchalant. Her partner didn't know anything about what they were going to fight, but his calm made Nita's farewells a lot less shaky than they might've been. It was _dumb_ for her to be this nervous, Nita told herself. She'd beaten the Lone One before. It had to be worse than the Goblin King, even though Nita had still had nightmares about _him_ , even after her mother had calmed her down, until she'd turned thirteen and convinced herself she'd gotten too old to be wished away.

"You okay, Neets?" Kit asked once they were outside and away from their Seniors, arm slung around her shoulder before the words finished, tugging her in against his side for a minute. She'd finally gotten used to him being taller, and right this moment it was a comfort to lean into that height and let his calm settle her down.

"Fine. Just a little nervous," Nita admitted.

"We're just backup," he reminded her, his voice dropped low as he flipped through his manual with his other hand, looking for the location.

"Yeah, and why do the Powers think she _needs_ backup if she's fighting somebody she already beat?" Nita muttered back, not nearly as easy with that as he seemed to be.

"Cause she's got crap for power? And she won't be any more used to this than we are to whatever her problem is?"

"She beat the Goblin King when she didn't have _any_ power," Nita reminded him. "All she's supposed to be doing is going up against him again. Why do They think that will take _three_ wizards when last time it didn't even take one?"

That did give Kit pause. "I dunno. So let's go and find out, huh?"

Nita stopped for a long minute, remembering Fred laughing next to her ear, whispering the same advice where she stood in the endless Now of Timeheart, before she took a breath that shuddered a little. "Let's."

They settled to building another short-distance transit spell with the ease of long practice on the parts they were used to. Their names in the Speech were written into it quick and certain, as was the general outline of the spell -- they used it all the time, after all. Where they took their time was in writing in the specific location they wanted to reach and the rest of the spell's equations, all of which were carefully double-checked before they joined their voices in the spell, matching each other word for word and pace for pace, still racing through the bits they spoke together... the universe bent its ear to listen, and as they finished the spell it took, throwing them from Tom and Carl's backyard into the park where they would find their new wizard and the latest challenge the Powers had seen fit to set them at.

***

Sarah wasn't sure how long she had been reading under the tree, absorbing everything she could about this new... almost a new reality, really. An entirely new way of thinking, at the very least, with Merlin snoring happily and sprawled over her feet, when she heard a woman's exhausted, desperate voice hiss out, "I wish the goblins -- "

She didn't need to hear the rest of the sentence before she was up, out from under Merlin, and running. But she didn't make it over to the thin blonde woman kneeling next to a baby carriage before the woman finished speaking: "-- right now."

"No," Sarah whispered, fear in her voice from her place frozen just a couple of feet away. "No. Take it _back_ , take it back before he comes!"

Localized darkness fell around them without a cloud in the sky and Sarah heard sounds that still echoed in her nightmares. Cheerfully malicious light laughter spilled from all of the nearby trees, and there was a rustle of a dark shape's movement in the grass under the carriage wheels, skittering movements half-seen and half-heard everywhere in the trees and the brush...

If she'd been just a little bit faster...

For a minute, Sarah was fourteen again, lightning ripping through the air and a white owl banging at the windows. No, Sarah told herself. She was older now, and she was a wizard. She could fix this. She could make it right. She could. She wasn't sure what right would _be_ , looking at the woman's face. She looked startled, a little worried, but she also looked at the suddenly silent carriage with something that Sarah was sure couldn't actually be relief, but looked... too much like it.

"Don't come, Jareth," Sarah said under her breath, too quietly for anyone but herself to hear. "Please don't show up."

All around her, it was as though the goblins cackled louder at her words. One of them popped its tiny fox-face over the rim of the carriage to waggle its tongue at her and make a loud obnoxious noise before it disappeared again, vanishing out of the carriage.

Sarah resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at it. "One of these days, I'll have goblin-skin boots," she muttered darkly, moving closer to the woman to try to talk to her.

There was no lightning, and no loud crash... but suddenly Jareth was walking towards them from where a moment before no one had stood. The expression on his face was completely unrecognizable, indecipherable, as he turned his head and looked at her for one long moment. His clothes were simpler than Sarah would have expected, just dark boots and deep rust-red tights and a dark leather vest over a blood-red shirt that fell without the frills. After that single look, it was as though he ignored her completely as he walked to the thin woman, standing before her. "You've made your wish. I have taken the babe. Did you mean it?"

"No!" Sarah said loudly. "No, she didn't mean it, she didn't know, she -- "

"Will you hurt him?" the woman interrupted her, looking up at the Goblin King with a half-stunned, half-fearful expression. Sarah understood that fear completely -- she'd been there.

"Be quiet, Sarah," Jareth said, offhanded and easy, then looked at the woman with an almost terrifying gentleness in his eyes. "I do not harm the children wished away, Melissa. He will be a goblin babe, but he will grow."

The woman -- Melissa -- smiled, slowly, like it hurt her. "Then I meant it."

Jareth smiled back at her, just as slowly but much more easily, and twisted his hand with a flick to bring a crystal to his fingertips. With little of his usual flare, he held it out to her, offering her everything she could want, caught in that clear little ball. "Here, little mother. I bring you a gift, for the one given to me. Here. See your dreams."

Sarah couldn't move, looking at the two of them, seeing the darkly bitter expression on Melissa's face as she answered him, rocking back on her heels and away from the slim outstretched hand and the shining crystal in it. "I don't want to see them. I want to _live_ them."

Jareth blinked, just once, and his head cocked to the side as if he had never heard such a thing in all his existence. It was almost startling, how much he looked like his avian form when he did that."I do not take without giving in return, Melissa. What would you have of me, for your child?"

"You're welcome to him, if he'll be safe with you," Melissa answered, leaning her head against the carriage. "You've given me my life back, Mr. Goblin. You couldn't give me the rest of what I want."

"Wait," Sarah interjected, her voice thin with distress.

Jareth's head turned, and his eyes narrowed to jade and ice chips as he looked over at her. "Sarah, this is not yours."

She glared back at him, hands tightened into fists at her sides. "I'm not going to make her run the Labyrinth. I'm not even going to try. But I'll do it."

His lips set thin, and he shook his head at her, his expression dark. "You have no claim on her child, Sarah. Nor any claim on her. No."

Sarah growled at him, glancing around for Merlin, and spotted two kids watching _them_ \-- unlike, she noticed, anyone else in the park. She couldn't believe she hadn't noticed before. When she looked around, it was as if everyone else completely failed to see the localized fall of darkness and the man standing in the middle of it wearing clothes from easily three centuries before... or possibly a theater company. As if no one else could see or hear the giggling malice dodging between the trees, only half-seen from the corners of her eyes. It was like everyone else in the park was blinded to it -- except the other two teenagers. They, unlike everyone else, were headed towards her.

"Guess this is her Ordeal," the boy said in a New York accent, a Spanish lilt adding to the dryness in his voice. " _Dai stiho_ , cousin."

" _Dai_ ," the girl said with him, from her voice also from New York, watching Jareth warily as she spoke. "So you must be Sarah Williams?"

Jareth's head tipped to the side again as he looked at the two newcomers, then his eyes went cold even as he answered them. "Well, young wizards. Ill-met," he said darkly.

"Which I guess makes _you_ the Goblin King. Nice teeth. Ever cut your mouth if you're careless?" the boy sniped back.

"... _Dai stiho_ , and what are you _doing_ here?" Sarah managed to ask, ignoring the frisson of shocked fear up her spine.

"Being their interfering selves, as they _usually_ do when they turn up," Jareth growled softly in her direction. "Not that any of you have any right to do so. Melissa... you do not wish the boy returned, true?"

"Not _ever_ ," Melissa -- didn't snarl, it wasn't loud enough to be a snarl -- but Sarah took a step back from the fury in her expression anyway. "I didn't want him. I can't look at him and not hate both of us -- him for ruining my life and me for not having been brave enough to go against my mother and get the abortion I wanted. Aaron will be safe with you. That's all I need to know."

"He will," Jareth agreed, nodding once to her, sober and firm. "Go, little mother. This is my trouble, now."

Melissa rose, brushing wisps of blonde hair out of her face, and walked to stand in front of Sarah. "I didn't know he was real," she said angrily, glaring at her. "But I meant it. Don't you _dare_ think I didn't. I have my life back. I have my _dreams_ back." Her voice broke. "I want him to be safe and happy. As far away from me as I can get him. I'd say _goblins_ work well enough."

She turned around and walked out of the darkness, leaving the baby carriage behind, sunlight gleaming on her hair.

Jareth let his eyes follow her until she was gone, then flicked his fingers at the baby carriage, sending it... somewhere. It would make an interesting addition, perhaps to the junk heap. One of the goblins would surely want it. Or if not, it would find its own place somewhere eventually.

"Jareth, you can't keep him," Sarah said quietly, dismissing the kids with them from her attention for the moment. Right now, she couldn't think about anything but some little boy named Aaron stuck with all of the goblins. Was he scared? Did he understand what had happened?

"Of course I can, Sarah. It's what I do."

She couldn't think about the pleased, happy look on his face as he'd watched the hedges, or the strangely worried tone in his voice when he'd said she might die on Ordeal. She couldn't afford the distraction, not with that little boy on the line. "You can't keep him. I can beat you again."

"You might. You might not. The point is, you have no right to try, Sarah."

"Why _not_?" she did snarl, her hands planted on her hips as she glared up at him.

The boy sighed, catching Sarah's attention for a moment. "Hey, I get that you two are old buddies, but I'm really feeling ignored."

"Because she. Made. Her. Choice, Sarah. She does not want the boy. He is, in her own words -- oh, _do_ be silent," he snapped over at the young man.

"Wizards aren't supposed to intervene with the Goblin King," the girl explained quietly, still eying Jareth like she thought he'd bite her. "We are on errantry, and we greet you. Both," she added, and the look on her face as she looked at Jareth now approached a glare.

"Then take your errantry and begone," Jareth replied sharply, his eyes snapping over at the pair of wizards again. "And you as well, Sarah, 'less you can give me any reason you should intervene where you are unwanted."

" _Why_ can't I intervene?" Sarah asked them, completely unwilling to accept anything that kept her from rescuing that child from the goblins. She wasn't going to just leave him with those things! She was _going_ to get him back, and Jareth wasn't going to stop her. She ignored him as much as she'd been ignoring the pair of wizards earlier, looking at them, now. "And who are you?"

"Kit," the boy introduced himself, glaring at Jareth. "She's Nita. We're here because Somebody thought you'd need us.

"So we're not leaving just 'cause _you_ tell us to, Your Majesty."

Jareth raked a gloved hand through his hair, and otherwise ignored them as completely as Sarah was currently ignoring him. He took a breath and twisted his power around him to leave...

...and could not. He kept any trace of how much that startled him off his face, unwilling to betray it, as his mind whirled over how in the names of the Many anything was _holding_ him in the mortal realm beyond the call. What was --

Sarah staggered for no reason she could think of, clutching at her head. The worst migraine ever had just hit her, stabbing bars of iron through her temples, and she couldn't help the whimper of pain that ripped out of her throat as she tried to stay on her feet.

"Sarah!" the girl -- Nita, Sarah thought, distant through the pain -- exclaimed, running to hold her steady, arm low around her waist. "Hey, you okay? Kit, check for -- "

"On it," Kit answered, flicking out a book and skimming through it.

Her low, pained noise had snapped Jareth's head around well before the female wizard's startled cry, and his green-blue eyes went wide at the pain written all through Sarah's body. //'Less ye give me... oh, _idiot_ , to let her have that much!// Jareth snapped inside his own mind. But even the building of that mild geas should not have _held_ him from leaving... What... the agonized look on Sarah's face did more than enough to tell him who, if not how. She was in _pain_ \-- the knowledge snarled through the back of his mind.

"Nobody's attacking her," Kit said to Nita, who was still holding a shaking Sarah up against her. "Just looks like she's using a hell of a lot of power without having cast any spell."

"She _is_ ," Jareth growled, not quietly, and his desire to leave this situation, to have this _ended_ surged again. He did not want to fight with her.

"I'm not doing _anything_ ," Sarah -- it was still a whimper, and her pride hated that; a small and distant hate underneath how much her head felt like it was coming apart, making her whimper again. Like she was forcing something too big into a tiny, tiny jar, and the jar was cracking. "Make this _stop_ , I -- Jareth!" His name was a plea more than anything else.

He was at her side in the next instant, all the power he'd gathered cast away for the moment. He stroked a hand down lightly over her hair, other hand slipping behind her back, ignoring that that meant touching the female wizard as well as his Sarah. That didn't matter. She did.

"Ssh, Sarah. Ssh," he breathed gently. She had always been what mattered, since the moment he saw her, felt her whisper to the world...

He'd made it stop. He'd made it _stop_. Her head was still throbbing, but she could _breathe_ , she didn't feel as though every heartbeat was going to break her any more. Sarah shoved away from Nita's hand enough to grab Jareth, hiding her face in the strangely familiar scent of his hair until she could breathe without shaking.

The Goblin King held her close in against his body, and his eyes blazed hotly dangerous at the pair of young wizards over her dark hair as his hand petted gently down over it.

Nita put one hand on Kit's shoulder, gripping hard enough to keep Kit still now that Sarah had twisted out of her grip. "I think the Powers might have underestimated her," Nita said softly, watching Jareth and Sarah. She didn't understand this at all, not given how they'd been fighting just a minute before... but she'd heard that kind of helpless, pleading cry before.

Jareth just held on to Sarah gently, stroking over her hair again and again; nothing but light, gentle caresses that he intended to ease her pain as he savored the fact that she'd called for _him_. Pushed away from the wizard-girl looking at him warily and pressed into his arms instead. It had been him that she wanted, that she clung to even now... triumph blazed up in him and he petted her again, his hand sliding even more gently. When in pain, she had called for him.

Sarah rested her head on his shoulder, drawing in deep, shuddering breaths as the ache in her head continued to fade. Then she realized that what was under her forehead was cool leather, and the faintly itchy rasp on her cheek was Jareth's hair, and her face went hot as she jerked backwards.

He hadn't realized she was moving quite in time to _not_ hold on just long enough that she fell when his grip released, and he shook his head in bemused frustration as he gently offered her a hand back up.

Sarah scooted back on her rump, babbling apologies, before she stopped mid-sorry and took one more deep breath. "This," she announced to the world, "Didn't happen. I'm getting up now." Without Jareth's help, thanks.

Jareth let his hand drop to his side when it became obvious that she wasn't going to take it... and gave up and laughed at her words and the absolute affront written on her features. "Of course it did. But you didn't have _much_ of an audience."

Sarah glared at him, obscurely comforted by his normal teasing behavior as she brushed dirt off her pants. "It did _not_." Then she glanced at their audience. "Sorry."

Kit just stared, and before he got a grip on his mouth, "What the _hell_ just happened?"

"I'll tell you when you're older," Nita answered dryly, walking forward to help the other girl. "Here, Sarah, you missed a little."

" _HEY_ ," Kit protested, watching as Sarah shifted to let Nita lend her a hand.

Jareth was nowhere near feeling obliging enough to give the boy an answer, and waited for Nita.

"We're still auxiliaries to her Ordeal," Nita told Kit calmly, trying to distract him from the momentary irritation. "Check her status."

Kit glared at her and flipped to the listing. "On Ordeal: no calls."

" _This_ is my Ordeal? Jareth?" Sarah protested. "I thought I'd get something harder!"

Jareth snorted quietly, though in the privacy of his own mind he predominantly agreed. Ordeals were supposed to be great trials, and she had won his -- him, if he were honest -- years before. "Well, given as you have yet to convince me that we're not going to be standing here arguing until you fall over from old age, Sarah, perhaps you've received what you just _asked_ for." He had really thought she'd gotten better about that.

Sarah tossed her hair, trying to pretend she wasn't still blushing with embarrassment. "Why would you say I can't?"

" _Still_ not listening? I thought you'd learned better."

Sarah glared at him, honestly angry now, and still seeing some little boy surrounded by goblins in the back of her mind. "You can't keep him. I'm not going to _let_ you." How could she have yelled for _Jareth_ to help her? The Goblin King? How could she have forgotten what he was _here_ for?

"He was given to me. By what right do you interfere?"

"By right of -- " Sarah paused, then continued more quietly. "By right of my Oath. To preserve what grows and lives well in its own way. To put aside fear for courage. Would you have me forsworn?"

"No." His voice was oddly quiet on the single word, gentle with the truth that he would never wish to see her torn by a broken oath. He would not have her injured, not by breached oath or other hand, if it were in his reach to stop it. However. "But your Oath has no hold on my land, and the babe will live as well as a cosseted goblin babe in my Court as he would as a human babe hated by his mother."

"His name is Aaron, and he lives just fine as a human baby," Sarah snapped at him. "I'm not going to give him back. She made her choice, she doesn't want him. I'm just not going to let _you_ keep him."

Kit and Nita glanced at each other. Nita shook her head no, forestalling the 'should we interfere?' question in Kit's tilt of his head. This felt like something the two of them had to resolve, and it was almost interesting, listening to the two of them debate, all old phrasings and deliberate cutting courtesies. They sounded more like theatre than anything else, but she knew it was deadly earnest.

"And what will you do with him, Sarah? Would you keep him? Take care of another screaming baby?" His voice made as much an insult of the last two words as he had the first time she'd heard it from his lips, and Sarah flushed dark again.

She lifted her chin, telling herself Jareth couldn't tell that he'd gotten her. "There are adoption agencies. Foster homes. Plenty of people want children who can't have them."

Jareth's smile was all flash of teeth sharp as a wolf's, and his eyes were flat as slate and jade as he studied her coolly. He hated this, hated with every shred of his will that it had come to this fight with her... but he was what he was made to be, and he would not give over what had been given to him. Not even for her, not when she considered it some kind of _right_. "Do you think that none of my goblins come from those places, Sarah? Do you know how long children languish in that 'care'?" His voice made it a curse.

Sarah flinched, but her voice stayed steady as she looked up at him. "I'm not letting him stay in your castle beyond the goblin city." She spat the last words out like poison, her eyes as cold as chips of sharp-cut malachite.

"Convince me, then, Sarah, that you have any _right_ other than your misplaced passion to intervene. You may tell me you "will not let" me keep what is mine by right until the end of time. That does not grant you the right to do anything about it."

" _I'll_ keep him! All right? Does that satisfy you? _I'll_ take care of him. He'll be mine," and Sarah could hear the universe listening to her, the world waiting for her will to reshape itself, but all she could see was Jareth.

"What's said is said, Sarah." His voice was a whip-crack of warning, and a long roll of thunder echoed it. "You will take on all care of him, allowing no other to have a hand in his raising? You will see that he has as much that he needs and desires as you are capable of providing, before seeing to any of your own needs? Think _carefully_ , Sarah, before you speak again." She was _not_ going to do this. He was not going to have it. He turned his gaze from her for a moment, looking to the pair of young wizards with an indescribable expression on his face, then looked back at her, waiting.

Sarah opened her mouth. She shut her mouth, and her eyes, thinking. She knew she had always had a bad temper, and she took things for granted when she was angry. "... In Life's name, and for Life's sake," she murmured under her breath. "Death for life, and fear for courage, when it is right to do so -- until Universe's end."

She wasn't seeing Jareth now.

She barely still knew he was there, despite the haughty, arrogant cast of his face that she still saw sometimes... often, when she woke up crying.

She was seeing a little boy named Aaron, a boy she had never met, whose face she didn't know. She was seeing Toby, who had looked safe when she had finally seen him. She was seeing Melissa's desperate, tired face, and the dawning hope that had been in her eyes when Jareth had offered her her dreams. She was seeing the goblins, who had fought her, had laughed at her, but who hadn't seemed to have hurt Toby at all. And Jareth had said Aaron would be safe. Sarah didn't think Jareth would lie about something like that. Part of her was quietly certain he couldn't, any more than he could have stopped her from running the Labyrinth to get Toby when she demanded the chance. "When it is right to do so," she murmured again, even more quietly, softly enough that she could barely hear her own voice. "That's the question, isn't it? That's what I'm taking for granted. That this is right."

"Yes," Jareth agreed, just as quietly, relief sliding through his veins that she had stopped. "You are."

Sarah didn't realize she was crying until she felt the wet warmth when a tear landed on her collarbone. "I... don't have a right." She lowered her head, taking a step back, moving away from him. "Aaron's yours."

He reached out, gentle as snowfall and quick as a striking snake, and brushed the tears gently from her eyes, baffled that she was crying. "Does it mean that much to you?"

Sarah nodded wordlessly, brushing his hand away from her face. She couldn't have left Toby there. She couldn't have walked away from her family. He was her _brother_ , as much as she'd resented him. But Melissa was no one Sarah couldn't have been, and Aaron could just as easily have been Toby. She'd had to try.

He _hated_ seeing her cry, hated having her reduced to the wordless agony in her eyes and the way her body had seized up around her pain. He would not give up what was his for her pride, but... her pain was more than he could stand. When it had only been her pride and her fear, he had been able to stand it better than this honest, real grief. He was accustomed to her pride, often delighted in it as strongly as he wished to see it break... but this wrenching, gnawing grief in her sank knives into him even as the cause baffled him.

He took a breath, and another, and spoke, driven to ease that pain. It was in his power to do... "Then you have thirteen hours. If you succeed, afterward, you will see him placed in the best care all of your Art can find for him, or I will reclaim him."

Sarah stared at him in confusion, her vision blurry with the tears she couldn't blink away. "What?"

"Be careful, Sarah," he told her. "Wizards die on Ordeal, and the Labryinth is as dangerous as you believe it to be. You have precious little time." He stepped back, completely away from her, and turned away.

"But I -- you _won_ , and --" The incomprehension in her voice was balm to his pride, and he was content that he could still confuse her as deeply as she baffled him.

Kit glanced up from his manual and opened his mouth; Nita kicked him in the shin before he could say a word. "We're still coming with her," Nita said quietly. "I know you don't like us. We don't like you, either. Take it up with the Powers."

Jareth looked over at Nita for a moment, then back at Sarah. "Do you wish their help?"

Sarah thought about it for a moment. She knew the Labyrinth, or at least she had. But something in Nita's voice told Sarah that she wouldn't win. /Take it up with the Powers,/ Nita had said, with the utter confidence of someone who knew she would trump any argument. "Yes."

Jareth nodded, accepting her will on this run of hers. "If any of you are still in the Labyrinth proper when the thirteenth hour strikes, then you, Sarah, go back to your own world. But if either of the others are still there, that one must stay there," he warned.

Sarah, Kit, and Nita looked at each other. Sarah was the first to speak. "Can they be won back?"

"Yes. The Labyrinth changes. The rules do not."

Kit shrugged, uncaring of the danger. "I trust Neets."

Nita nodded, sharing a grin with Kit that said she trusted her partner to get her out, too.

"Then they will be all the help you have," Jareth told Sarah, and it would have been easier for her to deal with if his voice had been cold. If she could have banked her anger against his uncaring reply. "They were not meant for my Labyrinth... though..." he looked at Nita again, _knowing_ her this time, "I heard you whisper, once. But not the right words. Thirteen hours, Sarah." Behind him, between two trees, the ruddy light of the Labyrinth's sky spilled out into the darkness.

Nita went pale in the corner of Sarah's vision, but Sarah was focused on the Labyrinth, and she was already moving. "Not a piece of cake this time," she reminded herself quietly.

His laughter rippled out, warm and light and truly amused, as he winked out of their sight.

Sarah got through the tree-crafted entry before she wiped the tear tracks off her face, pulling a tissue out of her pocket and blowing her nose, familiar unearthly light on her skin. "Okay," she sighed. "Nothing is as it seems in this place," she finally said, a little muffled but understandable. "Don't take anything for granted. If anything gives you advice, listen, but make sure you ask it why. And don't touch the faeries. They bite."

"The faeries what?" Kit asked, still trying to get over the fact that he had _never_ been ignored that totally, and with that much ease, in his life. He'd had run-ins with the Lone One and It had never ignored him that thoroughly. Of course, and his grin as he thought it was a little bit feral, that One was generally too busy trying to win to be able to afford to ignore him.

"They bite." Sarah looked at them. "Jareth wasn't kidding about thirteen hours. Hopefully this time he won't mess with the clock, but I don't plan to get his attention that much this time." Why had he let her in? She'd surrendered. He'd _won_. "Thank you for coming with me, and we need to get moving."

"Lead the way, then," Nita said, her voice a little unsteady. "Not that it's real hard to tell where we're going, I guess."

Sarah nodded, looking out towards the spires shimmering in the reddish light. "The castle beyond the goblin city." She looked down the hill, and saw that the gates were already open this time, to her great relief. No Hoggle spraying faeries for her to ask, Jareth had told her. No help at all other than what she'd brought with her. "Listen, did the Powers or anyone tell you anything about this place?"

Kit shook his head as they jogged down the hill, trying not to pay attention to the fact that the entirety of what he could see... was _moving_ , even if just a little. Solid stone walls... were not being the still, solid things they should be, and he didn't want to notice that. "No. We're not really supposed to be here, from what our Seniors said."

"You mentioned. Nita did, anyway. Wizards not intervening with Jareth." Sarah stopped in front of the open gate, eying it, and caught Kit's arm absently as he started to walk past her. "Not yet. I want to look at it first."

"I'm okay with that... except for the part where that shifting pattern up there wants to give me a headache," Kit answered.

Sarah glanced at him, picking up a rock from the ground as she decided to test her theory that the Labyrinth was never, ever this cooperative. Especially not when she had just royally angered its King. "Watch the gate instead." She threw it, watching how the air shimmered and the rock... contorted.

"We don't want to try walking through that, I don't think," Nita said quietly, looking at the rock hanging there, twisting in on itself. She heard a quiet chiming of song, and turned her head to see a ...faerie, a tiny and palely glowing naked girl with fluttering wings flying along, lighting on one of the vines. //Real faeries... that bite,// she shook her head, and put that away. It didn't seem like the little creatures held much importance in Sarah's eyes, even as fascinated as Nita was with them.

"It occurred to me that I might not want to trust the Labyrinth making my life easy. I know about traps now. I didn't the first time." Sarah was watching the gate, too, and her mouth twisted into nothing like a smile. "Of course, I might just have been taking a trap for granted, so the Labyrinth gave it to me."

"Neets, did that make sense to _you_?" Kit wasn't entirely sure the new girl wasn't speaking 'girl' instead of English, and he understood alien rocks better than he understood 'girl'. So he asked his partner. She was better at that kind of thing.

Nita was staring at Sarah. "You didn't the _first_ time... This thing changes based on whoever goes in it? It makes itself what you think you're seeing?" Her voice had spiraled up with each question, and Kit could still hear that fear under the disbelief anyone else would take her tone for. He really hated hearing it, too.

Sarah nodded, shrugging her shoulder as if that should have been obvious. "It changes based on who goes in it, it changes all of the time anyway... but there were big changes in my dream yesterday -- oh, you _jerk_ , Jareth!"

Nita gave Kit a long, speaking look as Sarah snarled in irritation at the Goblin King. It was the patented 'don't you dare blame this on hormones' look, the one Nita had developed when Kit and Ronan started teaming up against her. She was obviously in no mood to put up with another round of that. "If we can't go in here, where can we go in?" But her tone wasn't just an exasperated question: Nita was thinking. It made itself what you wanted to see? What you thought you were seeing?

Did its King do that, too?

If its King did... what did that mean? Was one of them changing him? Was Sarah?

Nita had known to be scared of the Goblin King as soon as she'd known he was real, but the man Sarah had been arguing with... he'd been fearsome, in his way, all sharp-edged sureness and inhumanly vivid, but Nita had seen the Sidhe hunting in their full glory. The Goblin King was not at their level, even though part of her said insistently that he ought to be. That, in some way or other, he _was_ , and she simply wasn't seeing it.

Which begged the question of why not. Was she just too frightened of a childhood terror to accept that the truth really wasn't as frightening as she'd thought he would be, or... was something about the situation changing him from the terrifying, powerful thief of children she remembered into -- whatever he had been while he was standing there?

Kit, though blithely ignoring the look and holding two fingertips against one temple as he tried to just look at the rock and the gate, was not ignoring its replacement by abstraction on Nita's face, even though something kept pulling at his attention, there was a _pattern_... "Neets?"

"What, Kit?"

Kit jerked his head at the gate and Sarah's focused expression. "Got any ideas?" He tilted his head, curious, wondering what was on her mind. "Or was that not what you were thinking about?"

"There's always a door. You just have to find it..." Sarah's voice was absent and quiet, as though she hadn't heard Kit and Nita, as she looked at the walls, trying to puzzle out this challenge.

"I.. was thinking about the way this place apparently changes -- means the book I read isn't going to be much use. Sorry, Kit."

Kit shrugged one shoulder, flashing a grin at Nita, relieved that that was all. Between the three of them, he was sure, the maze would not be a problem regardless of it switching up on Neets. "I guess I'll forgive you. This time."

"Thanks ever so," she grinned at him a little, and moved over to see if she _could_ figure something out about getting them inside.

Kit went back to staring at the walls, but that pattern kept niggling at him, and Sarah's words replayed in his memory. 'There's always a door.'

"Don't you want to be a door?" Kit's voice was quiet, friendly, just a nice conversation in the Speech as he walked slowly along a stretch of the wall. Nothing big or flashy at all, just a casual conversation. "Isn't that better than trying to hide? I know it's a pain, being something you're not, like a piece of the wall, and we'd really appreciate being able to use you today... "

Sarah's head snapped around as she heard Kit's voice, but she understood what he was saying full well -- so fascinating, to understand another language so easily -- and the simplicity of what he was trying made her smile a little to herself. The Labyrinth could be difficult -- but if it worked, she certainly wasn't going to complain. It wasn't as though she had a better idea about how to coax Its doors into appearing again. Hoggle had done it the last time, just that whisper of magic in the air that brought them into being. This wasn't so different...

The corner of Nita's eye caught it as a bit of the wall shuddered faintly, and she looked that way. There was something strange about that piece of wall, what was -- no vines grew there, only one long creeper stretched along that span of bricks. That was a lot different than the rest of the wall's overgrowth, the thickness of the creepers along them. She walked over, her voice picking up in her own Speech to talk to the vine. "Hi, there. Isn't it a strain, holding up against all that empty air?"

Sarah had spent most of her time with her manual learning what it called the Speech, the language everything -- _everything_ , and grasping that would take Sarah a while -- understood. She'd used it to talk to Merlin. She'd used it to hear the worms moving in the dirt under her. She tried to use it now, stretching up to touch the shuddering wall with her fingertips. "Don't you want to relax? Open?"

[I'm not supposed to!] came a cry from the shuddering wall, [... but yes. I do... you want me to, too...]

"Why aren't you supposed to?" Sarah asked cajolingly, stroking the stone gently as she spoke to it.

Kit made his voice even more friendly, even more persuasive, but he wondered the same thing. It wasn't often that rocks spoke that quickly, or that strongly... "We'd really appreciate it if you opened, and you know you'd feel better. It has to be so unpleasant, hiding this way..."

[...you're not the one we were meant for!] the wall told her, offense thick in its tone, [but you're the ones that are here... you were already here. You're not supposed to come through twice. But... I'm the door. I...] It shuddered again, violently, and the stone image fell away to the shape of the great doors. Doors which creaked open slowly, almost painfully, after a few moments.

"Thank you," Sarah whispered to it, pressing her cheek to the wood, hearing Kit and Nita thank it as well.

[You asked,] it told her quietly. [Only the goblins ever ask. And the Keeper.]

It simply wouldn't have occurred to her to ask the door itself. The worms, maybe, if she could find one. Even one of the faeries, from a safe distance, but not the door. She wasn't used to this yet. Sarah promised herself that when she was done, she would make sure she remembered this. That doors had feelings, and probably human doors did, too.

Kit stepped on through, and swallowed quietly as he looked _up_ the walls. They glittered, sparkled like cut granite, but that rock wasn't granite, couldn't be, not to be shaded like that, and it looked almost damp, a sharp contrast to the bone-dry floor littered with branches at their feet, though the branches glittered with that same almost crystal dampness...

"Am I the only one getting the feeling that when people say walls have ears, they mean these walls?" he joked, looking back at his partner -- and was answered by a torrent of words in the Speech from almost every stone of the walls around him. [We hear, we remember! What do you want to know?] they asked in thousand-part harmony.

A few feet away, a sprout of coral-looking plant turned towards him, eyes at the end of the stalks blinking as it whispered to itself... if anyone cared to notice it.

"They do," Sarah said, nodding with wry agreement. "They're taller... but then, I'm taller too."

Nita _did_ hear the plant, even if she couldn't hear anything the walls were telling Kit, and she went to crouch by it. "... Do you know the way to the castle beyond the goblin city?" she asked in the Speech, slipping into the kind of language the book had used, the way that Sarah and Jareth had fought. Sometimes, how you said something was more important that what you said.

[We remember her,] the plant told her, excitedly waving its stalks and blinking its multiple eyes to speak. [She asked the vurm. The vurm told her.]

"Do you remember what it said?" Nita kept her tone friendly, a little curious, ignoring Kit and Sarah completely for the moment. Some plants were sensitive to things like that. This didn't seem much like a crabapple, but she didn't want to be wrong.

[The vurm said 'not that way! never go that way!'] the plant answered, blinking its eyes as if in morse code as it whispered and chittered to her. [Then it said 'if she'da gone thatway, she'da gone straight to tha' castle.'] It wriggled all of its stalks in a shrug, [but tha' way is thi' way, now, and we don't know which way is which. We just grow.]

//If something gives you advice, ask it why,// Nita thought. //Boy, she wasn't kidding.// "Thanks," Nita told the plant, rising. "Did you know the vurm lied to you?" she asked Sarah.

"..what?" Sarah asked, turning around to look at Nita... and then at the plant she had been talking to. It blinked at her, and in the blinks she heard [hello].

"Hi," Sarah answered back, her voice gentling on sheer instinct. "You look familiar."

Kit, for his part, was trying to fend off the screaming headache this much _chattering_ , living, garrulous stone was giving him as it all tried to tell him everything it had seen and heard in what felt like the last hundred years.

[We remember you! You were here!] it said back, waving in the same excitement it had shown Nita.

Sarah smiled, nodding as she spoke back to it.. "A couple years ago, yeah. Was it that long here?"

Nita let Sarah have the plant, moving over to Kit. "You okay, el Niño?"

[Seasons and seasons, many moves,] it blinked at her, stretching out an eyestalk tenatively.

"This stuff is _loud_ , Neets, and it knows I'm here, because it's all trying to talk to me at once. I can't understand it, there're so many voices..."

Sarah thought for a minute. Plants could talk, obviously. This one was proof positive of that. Could they talk to each other? Could she ask this one how to get to the hedges? The hedges had been close to the city walls...

Nita frowned, glaring at the walls for giving her partner so much trouble. "Hang on, I think I brought my headset with me... hopefully it works better than my watch is." Her watch hadn't ticked another second past since she'd stepped into this weird other world. If it wouldn't go back to working once she was in the real world, she was going to be so pissed. She couldn't just use the sun in front of non-wizards, after all.

His eyes widened hopefully as she dug into her bag. "Oh, man, I hope you did, Neets..."

"Here. I think the batteries are fresh, too." They would be, if Nita had to have a word or two with them. Kit not protesting his nickname always meant something was wrong, and she'd heard choruses of plants that were as bad as what he was talking about once or twice.

Kit slid the headphones into his ears gratefully and fiddled with the volume to where he could still hear her, but not the background noise of the yelling rocks. "Thanks, Nita."

"Welcome, Kit." She squeezed his shoulder in comfort, then headed back towards Sarah.

She was still in the middle of coaxing the way to the hedges out of the friendly plant when Nita touched her shoulder, crouching down to listen with her. The plant was telling her what it could, but all it could really tell her was that it sounded like the hedges were 'that' way... which happened to be straight through the walls.

But it was a direction to aim for, Sarah thought, and if she had learned one thing in the Labyrinth it was to take any help offered. "Thank you," she told it, and got back up.

"Yay, chatty plants?" Kit asked, head tipped to the side.

"The hedges are that way," Sarah said wryly, pointing through the wall. "How to get there, I don't know. I can't climb these. I think I'd break something. But it's something to aim at, if we can keep track of which way that is..."

It might have been a trick of the light that the walls seemed straighter, higher, and wetter the moment that she mentioned climbing them. And then again... it might not have been.

Sarah's eyes narrowed. "I might be able to," she said testingly, walking forward and resting her fingers on one damp patch of stone that felt almost like it was breathing under her hand. "Could I climb you?" she asked in the Speech, trying to sound just idly curious.

[How long can you climb?] they asked in return, [How strong are your fingers?]

Sarah thought about that. She'd climbed trees a lot when she was younger, before deciding that wasn't what princesses did, and after she'd gotten home from the Labyrinth she'd gone back to climbing. She had never tried to climb anything this wet-looking, or this steep. And the way that they had asked that question... "Would you be making yourselves taller if I tried?"

[Yes.]

Sarah snorted air out through her nose, sure she knew why. Jareth. But that was taking things for granted, wasn't it? "Why?"

[Because that is not the way.]

Sarah tilted her head, letting the curiosity bleed into her voice. "Why not?" She was wasting time, she knew it, but last time she had succeeded because she had taken time to help Ludo, to talk to Didymus, to ask the bird man. Asking the walls made just as much sense as trying to negotiate with Hoggle in the beginning had.

[The ways are the open places. You know that. You walked in us before. Climbing is not the way.] The walls sounded almost scolding.

//The path you will take will lead to certain destruction,// a False Alarm said in her memory, and Sarah nodded, leaning her forehead against the stone. "There are open ways on top of you." That was a bit of an exaggeration, given the upthrust spears of stone above the walls, but she could surely slip around those. She was aware of Kit and Nita listening behind her, but they weren't interfering. Asking their own questions, maybe, or looking for more doors.

[...that is not the way,] the walls answered, stones shifting under her hand.

"Why isn't it?" Sarah asked again, but she could hear in their tones that stone did not yield because a human asked it to. If she were a plant, maybe, but she wasn't. Sarah was just Sarah, wizard or not. Maybe that was why the Powers had wanted her to run this again.

[Because it is not how we were made. If you climb, we grow. That is the way.]

Sarah let her hand drop. "Thank you for the conversation," she whispered before lifting her head from the stone. She couldn't argue with something doing what it was meant to. Sarah would just have to find her own door, one that led to the hedges.

[You are welcome. ...remember, the ways are the open places.]The stones fell silent then, with a rustle of finality. She wasn't going to get anything more out of them.

"I will." The open places? Like, for example, not the underground paths Hoggle had used? Sarah hadn't intended to go those ways anyway, much as she would have liked to visit the False Alarms.

"No luck on the climbing?" Nita asked

"No. They're made to grow higher if someone climbs. They're very... insistent on the ways being the open places." Sarah's tone was openly speculative. She still wasn't sure if the walls had been giving her advice, a warning, or something else.

Something tickled in the back of her mind, a voice... Hoggle saying grumpily that 'I wouldn't go either way.'

She never had asked him which way he _would_ go. She wished she had, now. There was something _there_ , and she didn't know what. Through the walls? Maybe. That was how she had found the door last time. She'd walked through the gap between the walls. Maybe there was a spell... Sarah remembered seeing something about a Mason's Word in her Manual. She didn't feel inclined to trust it on stone that breathed.

"The open places?" Kit asked, and he slipped the earphones out of his ears, fingers running very light along the stone as he walked back towards her. His fingers skipped past a vine... and then his entire hand went deeper than it should have, looking -- from where she stood -- as if it had sunk into the wall.

"... The open places," Sarah agreed, grinning. "Last time I ended up going left. If the vurm lied, I still want to go left, if the walls still point the same way. I'm not sure they do, so... does anyone have a coin?"

Nita handed her one after a moment's digging in her pocket, though it was accompanied by a very doubtful look.

"Heads, right, tails, left. It makes as much sense as anything else here, I'd say?"

"If you say so," Kit agreed with the headphones back in, feeling with his fingertips to figure out how wide the 'door' in front of him actually was.

Sarah flipped the coin. It landed on its edge, balanced perfectly on a crack in the stones, and Sarah -- snarled.

The coin fell, tail-side up.

"Looks like le -- Kit, get _back_ here!" Nita snapped as her partner started to suit deed to word and go through the opening.

"What? It said left!" Kit protested.

"None of us," Nita said slowly, quietly, and calmly, "Go through different doors. How do you know the doors don't change? Look, I'm the one with a little sister close to my age, okay? We hold hands, and we go through together. Sarah, you grab my left hand, Kit, you grab my right."

Sarah nodded. "She's right. It does things like that." She dipped to pick up the coin, then wrapped her hand in Nita's. Kit gave her a look for a second, then remembered doors that could do just that and reached back for her hand, grabbing hold of it. It felt a little silly, but if it would make her happy -- and it did make sense -- he'd do it.

"If either of you let go, I will make the walls eat you," Nita threatened evenly. "Let's move."

Sarah didn't chuckle, but her hand tightened a little, and they snaked through the thin opening and headed left... down what looked like another endless corridor of tall, damp stone.

"Try finding another open place?" Kit suggested.

"Yeah," Sarah agreed, reaching out to run her fingers along the walls. Then she said in the Speech, quietly, "Can anyone show me where an opening is?"

The question was carefully worded, and several of the stones murmured [I can.]

"Will you? Where is one?" she asked then.

One stone shuddered, saying [Here. The open place is here.] The stones around it groaned, complaining that it had told, and protesting that no, there was no opening there.

Sarah reached out, stroking the stone that had answered her for a long moment. "Thank you," she told it, then reached to see how the opening stretched.

She hadn't let go of Nita's hand, and she was grateful -- it felt like the door was trying to _swallow_ her, like it had felt falling through to the oubliette with the Helping Hands. She set herself, using Nita's grip to do it, and pulled back out of the opening. "Oookay. I think I know where that one goes, and we _don't_ want to take it. Let's find another."

Did every door have two sides, like the one she'd used the first time? Sarah moved her hand to its opposite end testingly, searching out what felt like a perfectly normal door.

The door felt normal... Sarah wasn't sure she trusted anything in the Labyrinth to be normal, but what else could she do? "Strange... this side feels like a normal opening, not... that. Okay. Keep to this side, _tightly_." She slipped through, staying as close to that wall as she could, tugging Nita and Kit with her.

"More _stone_ ," Kit groaned, coming out into what looked like an identical damp, shining corridor. "How many ways in and out of this place can there be?"

"... don't ask that," Sarah told him softly. "Unless you want it to tell you."

Nita and Kit glanced at each other sidelong. Kit swallowed and nodded to Nita, shoving the headphones more securely into his ears. He didn't want these walls to try and give him answers, and the best way not to get them was to not listen right now. They kept wandering in the high, solid walls of rock, slipping though the openings when they could find ones that were "safe"...

Until what felt like hours later, when Sarah breathed a quiet sigh of relief when they reached the sharp, smooth-edged, small sections of bent, twisted walls.

"Don't try to mark our way," she tossed over her shoulder as she led them along, still keeping a tight hold on Nita's hand. "The Labyrinth doesn't like that -- or maybe it's some of the denizens. The marks will move. Now, which way... ?" The signpost wasn't trustworthy, she'd known that the first time, but it marked as good a direction as any other she could see.

"The _marks_ will move?" Nita wasn't sure if she wanted to be curious or shocked, and her voice wasn't either.

"The smallest-folk," Sarah explained, using Jareth's words for them since she didn't have any better ones. "They don't like the walls or the floor to be written on; they'll move the tiles and change them around."

"What're the 'smallest folk'?" Kit asked her, looking up at the balls of rock poised on top of the walls at apparently completely random intervals.

"I have no idea," Sarah admitted. "I've never seen one of them. I just saw what they did the last time I tried to keep track of which way I'd gone." Her answer was absent as she studied the signpost. Only three paths, this time, when she had seen four, five, even six roads branching off at other points. Jareth had given his permission for Kit and Nita to run the Labyrinth with her, but... had _it_? "Could the Labyrinth be trying to split us up?"

"We're not letting it, are we?" Kit asked, looking at the knobby, pointing stone hands sticking out of the obelisk warily.

Sarah snorted. "Since I don't want Nita feeding me to a wall... "

Nita smirked, tossing her hair back a little, and tried very hard not to think about what the Goblin King would probably do -- given the look on his face when he'd stroked Sarah's hair -- if Nita _tried_. "Rock, paper, scissors?"

"Yeah. Kit, which way do you say?" Sarah asked. Nita's hands were busy, after all, so it fell to them to play the game out.

"We keep going left, so I vote the right-hand way this time," Kit answered.

"...I buy that logic," Sarah nodded, and shifted to face Kit. She thought about his current problems with the Labyrinth while the two of them counted off, and when her hand snapped out it was in the closed fist of rock.

Kit had gone for scissors, trusting his affinity with metal, and made a face at Sarah's rock. Trust a girl to mess with him.

She chuckled, bopped his fingers with the heel of her fist, and shrugged. "Looks like it's left some more..."

Kit grumbled under his breath, but he followed Sarah and Nita when she headed left.

If Sarah had had any doubts that the Labyrinth was trying to split them up, the way the passages narrowed and turned into mostly flights of quick stairs was dispelling them fairly quickly. She growled, "Jareth, this is _cheating_ ," under her breath. She did not say it wasn't fair. Sarah had learned better than that quite a while back.

/Why are you blaming me?/ was carried to her on a wisp of wind, the faintest echo of his voice that might have been entirely in her head.

//It's _your_ Labyrinth,// she thought, but did not say aloud. She frowned, though, as she realized that stairs meant that either they'd turned wrong, the Labyrinth had shifted massively, or... they were climbing one of the rock-piles she'd only seen from a distance before. If they were, that meant they were going to have to go back _down_.... she stopped, turning her head to meet Kit and Nita's confused looks her way. "I think we turned wrong somewhere. Let's have some water, then see if we can get back down into the main Labyrinth." And see if they could get a clear view of the rest of it on the way.

Kit nodded agreement with that, thirsty himself, and fished into his knapsack for a bottle of water. "Got one of your own, Sarah?"

"In my backpack somewhere. And granola bars. And some other stuff." She let go of Nita's hand to take her backpack off -- and the flagstone she was standing on dropped out from under her, making her scream as she fell into one of the Labyrinth's many underground passages. She grabbed at the walls, uselessly trying to slow herself down as she just kept _sliding_...

\-- and tumbled out onto grass, cursing as she stretched carefully to see if she'd hurt anything on the race through the tunnel-chute _thing_ \-- she'd hated those the first time, with Hoggle, when they'd both nearly landed in the Bog. At least this was grass, and she'd kept hold of her backpack. The question was where was she now? For that matter, where had she left Kit and Nita? Hopefully the Labyrinth hadn't managed to separate them yet. They seemed like they'd be better off together.

'If either of the others are still here, they must stay here,' Jareth said in her memory, and Sarah's mouth firmed in a determined look that had made Jareth take a step back more than once. That wasn't going to happen. She wasn't going to leave anyone in this place. Not Aaron, and not them. No matter what he wanted.

***

As Sarah fell screaming, Kit snapped "Stop!" in the Speech at the rock, following it with a "Please?" a moment later, trying to coax it not to close up behind her.

The rock closed firmly, but there was a slightly apologetic sound to its click as it shut, leaving no trace of the trapdoor that had opened under Sarah.

"...how did we let it get her?" Kit asked, looking at Nita as his grip on her hand tightened. "We're supposed to be her backup."

"We forgot that this place isn't nice," Nita answered, looking furiously at the floor. "And it doesn't play fair."

Kit took the headphones out and knelt down without ever letting that grip loosen. "Okay," he said in the Speech quietly. "I know you had to close... but you're a door. You could open back up, couldn't you?"

The door's answer was hesitant. [Not supposed to... ]

"Why not?" he asked it quietly, petting along its edges gently.

[You're together. Three of you, all from _outside_. That is not the way.]

"What is the way, then?" Kit asked it, still petting the stone lightly. Everything liked to be appreciated, and to be treated well. He knew he wasn't going to like the answer, but it would be more than he had right now. Information always helped, one way or another -- and he sounded way too much like Dairine for his own comfort, right then. He shook that off to listen to the stone as it answered him.

[One person, one way. We split you up, run separately, face us alone. It is our way.]

"What's going to happen if we don't let you split us up?"

[We will make you.] The answer came with all the firm certainty of stone.

Kit swallowed, and looked up at Nita. "Don't suppose you heard the flagstone..."

Nita shook her head, a little worried at the look on Kit's face.

"It says they're going to make us split up."

The look Nita felt on her own face was familiar. It was the same sort of expression she'd worn when she had read from the Book, the kind of determination that drove roots through rock. "Good luck with that."

The rock under Kit's hand asked quietly, [Do you want to stay?]

"Here? Not a chance. Together? Yes. We're _partners_ ," Kit answered fiercely.

[We care not,] the rock told him, solid and firm as its substance. [Together is not the way.]

"It's our way," Kit replied flatly, squeezing Nita's hand.

[Warned you,] the rock said, and fell silent.

"... Thanks for the warning," Kit told it, stroking its edges one more time before getting up. "Neets? I think it's about to start being not-nice again."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Kit agreed, casting a rueful grin her way. "I'm missing wizardry."

"Me too," Nita nodded, agreeing with him completely on that topic. If she'd ever been tempted to walk on air again, it was right now. "Hey, switch hands, real careful. I'm starting to lose circulation in that one."

Kit let go of her hand. After he'd already grabbed the next one. He had no plans to fall screaming through a hole in the floor that hadn't been there the second before -- watching Sarah do it had been bad enough. He wasn't about to do that to Nita. -- or let this place steal her away from him with one of those tricks.

"Thanks," Nita told him as she worked her hand for a couple of minutes, bringing circulation back into it. "Okay. We don't know where we are, but we know the castle's in the center of this thing. That means... thattaway, right?"

"Best as I can tell," Kit agreed, then gave Nita a worried look. "You think she'll be okay solo?"

Nit bit her lip, then gave her partner an equally long look. "You got any good ideas on how to find her, Kit?"

He had to shake his head -- not that he liked the situation at all, but she was right. "Not if we don't trust this place not to eat wizardry. She'll probably be better off solo than _we_ would be. She knows what she's getting into."

"Yeah. I mean. I know we need to get back to her, we're supposed to be her backup, but I can't think of any way to get to her. Here's hoping our paths cross as we get closer to the center?"

"Nothing else to do," Kit agreed, scowling thoughtfully at the floor.

Nita nodded, sent one of her own glares at the flagstone that had been a trap just waiting to spring, and started trying to get out of the wrong turn they'd taken. She resisted the urge to stomp on it as they went past -- that would be petty, and it wasn't all the stone's fault. She hoped Sarah would be all right -- so far, this Ordeal was more aggravating than theirs had been, but less dangerous. It might even stay that way.

***

She hadn't really known where to go when she landed in the grass. But left hadn't gotten her anywhere she'd wanted to be, so Sarah did something she hadn't done in years. She shut her eyes tight and started spinning around, holding out her arms, and when she was dizzy she stopped, staggering a little, and started walking the way her right arm had been pointing.

She hadn't, Sarah noticed as she walked, been here before. Some kind of meadow at the base of a tower -- were Kit and Nita still in there? But they hadn't been climbing a tower, she would have noticed that, surely. Sarah wouldn't put it past the Labyrinth to have dumped her at the other end of itself. Physics didn't work like that, but physics and the Labyrinth didn't have anything to do with each other. She'd learned that a long time ago.

Sarah had no idea how long she'd been walking, but at least she was finally out of the meadow. In a forest, this time, but she didn't think it was the Fiery's forest. Even though she was sure she could hear things moving around her, and her skin was prickling. Sarah didn't pause, but she lifted her head and said, clearly and in the Speech, "Anyone there?"

A chorus answered her, the quiet sussuration of leafrustle of [of course we're here] from the trees, a low rumble of quiet Speech from the earth below, and many piping cries of [I'm here!] from a multitude of small creatures in and around the trees.

Sarah grinned, amused almost despite herself. "Glad to hear you all." But it wasn't what she'd meant. It was strange to feel honestly threatened in the Labyrinth proper, not just the part of it where Jareth happened to be. Sarah had been frustrated by the Labyrinth before, and a little worried, even scared, but she couldn't see anything that was threatening her now. Which didn't mean she wasn't sure it was there. She was. She knew when something was lurking outside her vision, waiting.

There or not, whatever it was obviously didn't mean to show itself right then, so she moved on, listening to the trees talking to themselves. Something about the fall collages, and who was taking up too much of the sunlight, and when was the next rain going to fall, did anyone have a sense about that? The trees were distracting enough that she almost didn't see the shape of the small, female goblin struggling with a ragged pack much bigger than she was until she had almost fallen over the knee-high creature. Sarah ended up falling over herself in the rush to get backwards enough to avoid the little goblin, landing square on her rump again, looking at the little goblin. "Sorry!" she apologized hastily. "I'm so sorry!"

"You didn' step on me, biggun," the little female said, nearly toppling over as she craned her neck up to look in Sarah's eyes. She had short, deep brown fur, ragged, of course, and sharp fox-like features with big, liquid gold eyes. "Issa okie."

Sarah smiled at her. "Thanks." Nothing is as it seems in this place, her own advice re-echoing in her head, and Sarah wondered if she was taking this for granted. She got back to her feet, brushing her pants off again. "I'm glad you're okay."

"Biggun?" the little goblin asked, blinking up at her as she pointed well up over her head, sharp claws at her fingertips. "Can reach that?" The 'that' in question was apparently a clump of dark purple fruits, small as raspberries but hanging like grapes, dangling in a cluster from one of the nearby trees.

The answer, Sarah decided, was probably yes, but assuming that she was taking the presence of a threat for granted was just as much taking things for granted as assuming a goblin woman maybe as tall as her knee -- maybe -- wasn't a threat. Sometimes the Labyrinth gave her a headache. She pulled a glove out of her backpack, slipping it on before she reached for the berries.

The little goblin clapped approvingly, hopping up and down with glee. "Clever biggun not to touch! And yays, done earlies, I be!!"

Sarah smiled at her, carefully dipping to add the berries to her pack. "Glad I could help."

"Tankyu!" the goblin chirriped. "Back to city I goes," she chattered cheerfully as she reached back to flip the pack closed and start to trot down the faint trace of a pathway. "And 'times to get din, too! Oh, good day... good, good day... and a nice biggun, did you ever think to see that again, feet?"

Sarah smiled after her, listening to the chatter of the goblin woman fading, before she carefully removed the glove and stuck it inside-out in a ziplog bag. She took the granola bars out, first, and slipped then into her pockets. She was sure she didn't want to touch anything that those berries had touched, and -- and what had she wanted them _for_ , exactly? And _where_ had she said she was going... surely it couldn't be that easy. Surely.

She could still hear the little goblin's voice, faintly. Push was coming to shove, and Sarah had no idea whether to trust the faint pathway or keep wandering.

The problem with the Labyrinth, Sarah thought, was that you couldn't be sure when it was being itself and when it was being exactly what you expected it to be. Sarah knew all of the fairytale rules -- help something, and it would help you. But Sarah also knew about traps now, in ways she hadn't when she was fourteen. Sarah knew about ambushes, too. She knew about razor blades and poisoned needles in apples, and pits filled with spikes under the road you wanted to take.

The other thing she knew was that every offer had a time limit. And she didn't know how much of the thirteen hours remained.

Sarah started walking down the path. Her strides were much longer, so it wasn't really that much of a surprise when she caught up with the trotting goblin woman before very long had passed.

At the sound of a twig breaking under her foot, the goblin spun around, shaking a tiny fist at her even as she struggled for her balance and nearly fell over on the pack. "Whatchoo startle me fores, biggun?! You no makea me fall!"

//This goblin doesn't seem so bad,// Sarah told herself. //Funny, almost silly. Not so scary...// "I heard you say you were going to the city. I'm trying to get there, too. Would you mind if I walked with you?"

The goblin's sharp eyes narrowed. "Goblin city? Why biggun --- biggun runs the Labyrinth. Biggun... biggun is _Sarah_. Twid not gets in trouble with GoblinKing for youse... but youse helped." A considering look went across the goblin's sharp features, before she spoke again. "Not helping if not say nothing. If biggun wants to follow, biggun follows. Twid too small to run away from biggun..."

Sarah grinned at her, amused at the goblin-logic there. "Then I won't offer to carry your pack, and you can pretend you didn't notice me."

"Did youse hear something, feets?" Twid asked her feet, and went right back to jogging along -- at what made up a decent pace for a 'biggun'.

Sarah hid her laugh behind her hand and followed, not really bothering to keep an eye on landmarks. If the goblin woman was leading her wrong, landmarks wouldn't do her any good -- the Labyrinth would just switch them around when she tried to find her way back.

***

Nita glared at the skinny tunnel in front of them, completely unamused by its presence, and less amused that it was the only way out of their current area. "I couldn't have fit through that when I was _ten_. Give me a break."

Kit glared at the tunnel too, muttering under his breath -- very carefully not in the Speech -- that this was not funny, and it probably wasn't the right way _anyway_ , and... "Nita? I'm going to try a spell, see if I can't get that rock to open out a little. I mean, I don't think I could get through there, either. Not easy, and there's no way we could keep hold of each other. So either we back-track, or..."

"Trust the Mason's Word to get this rock to open and not eat either of us halfway through?"

"Yeah, pretty much... though I was thinking about trying to just spell it open some more..."

Nita eyed it. "I'm not sure I trust it... " Then she glanced behind her, and her eyes sparked hot with the flare of her temper. "But I don't think we have another option. There wasn't a dead end the way we came five minutes ago, was there?"

Kit looked backwards, seeing the same closed stone walls she had, walls that barred off everything but this choice, and his lips tightened in a rush of temper just as high. "No. No, there wasn't. Okay. Here goes nothing..." he started working, laying out the verbal components of a spell to coax that tunnel to widen, laying down the reasons why it could have been before... or would be soon, and why couldn't it be already?

Nita waited, not willing to give this thing a chance to eat both of them. Kit had to do wizardry. Fine. Nita didn't, not yet.

The stone groaned, and complained, and called Kit some truly vile names, but it slowly, grudgingly, opened out as far as they could see. It was still a narrow tunnel, but they could scrape through it if they crabwalked. Nita was fine with crabwalking as long as she didn't let go of Kit's hand.

She whispered a few words, and a tiny ball of light sprang up above them, just enough to keep either of them from freaking out about the darkness. The first time she'd found and used this spell, things she wanted to say to Fred had kept flickering through her mind... that had mostly gone away a long time ago. She wasn't sure why the urge had struck now, when there was nothing to bring it to mind, but... she put that ache away

It was that light that let her see the tunnel narrowing on the space between the two of them. "Kit..."

"Yeah, Ni... oh. Oh, this is not _funny_."

"I think," Nita said tightly, watching the contracting rock as it squeezed closer around their hands, "that it passed not being funny a long time ago."

"Right there with you," Kit agreed, trying to push back closer to her despite the way the rock was pushing in.

The rock contracted faster. Nita got the distinct impression that it was enjoying the chance to move so freely, and she also got the impression that the only reason it hadn't already slammed shut was that it was giving them a chance to let go before it had to break their grip itself. //So nice of it,// she thought bitterly.

"Neets?"

"I think it's going to end up winning this round, _el Niño_."

"I'll find you," he told her, turning his head to look straight into her eyes. "We're _partners_."

"Not if I find you first," Nita said back, and she let go of his hand, shutting her eyes.

The wall shut between them with a sliding, triumphant laugh echoing in the grind of the stone. Once it was quiet, she opened her eyes again. In front of her, light slowly began to seep through a crack in the wall. "At least you _are_ letting me out," Nita muttered to the rock under her breath, waiting until the crack widened enough for her to walk through. Then she paused, and in the moment it took for her to grasp the new landscape she started swearing in languages most humans wouldn't recognize. Not the Speech, but some of the bits of alien tongues she was picking up off Kit's cable and their work on errantry.

This wasn't fair. This was _cheap_ , this was -- using her _mother_ to play this _game_!

Nita made herself stand still, despite how much she wanted to turn and run. 'Things weren't always what they seemed', Sarah had said, and this wasn't that awful race for the kernel all over again. It was a flooded, sick-smelling terminal, full of the scent of stagnant salt water and rot, that was all this was, but it felt like her mother's inner world. Cold and damp and in pain.

She bit her lip harder, and dipped down to fold the legs of her jeans up before she put her foot down into the floodwaters, then the other, slogging down into it with every bit of her determination. The Mason's Word -- even the variant Kit had used -- hadn't fully worked, she wasn't about to try the walk on water spell. She would just deal with the soaked clothes. Nothing in _this_ water was trying to bite her, at least. Yet, Nita qualified. This trip didn't have a Prayala, or What he'd carried around inside him. And this trip didn't have her mother's life on it -- that was already gone.

//If it's acting like New York, even just this much...// She had always been able to find her way in her own city. That gave her hope. Above her head were none of the murals, none of the beauty of Grand Central... there was only the suggestion of the multi-leveled concourse in the -- her head whipped around at a rustling slide, staring up above her at the long slide of dark, almost-glowing tail that disappeared into a crevasse. It looked almost like the Eldest's tail, and Nita went cold. No wizardry meant that she had no shield, and Nita had had nightmares for ages of not getting that shield up fast enough when she and Kit had met the Eldest's flame.

She didn't hear it again, and the water was still and unmoving other than the ripples she left behind as she kept walking.

Her Ordeal, and her mother... what else was this maze going to throw at her?

She knew Grand Central, and if this was somehow based on it... she picked up her pace, making for the stairs _out_ \-- and while she came out into light, it wasn't the city that sprawled around her.

"... Physics doesn't work like this," Nita said aloud, even though the words came out small and choked. The canyon she had traveled down for the Song couldn't exist in open air. It wasn't possible for the forces that had torn it open to act on the surface. But here it was anyway. The great, deep Gate of the Sea, the western border of Alfallone before the Twelvesong had been betrayed and it paid the price, _could not_ be here. But she stood at the bottom of its slope, looking up at the immensity of the walls.

Nita shut her eyes. If this was the Gate of the Sea, fine. Nita could play that way. She had _been_ the Silent Lord, the willing sacrifice to rescue the Sea from the Lone One's hold, Ed or no Ed, and it wasn't that hard to pull the Song back into her head. Even silently.

Nita opened her eyes and began walking.

***

  
Kit had never been so tempted to say quite so many utterly foul things in his life as he was as he stared at the wall that had separated him from his best friend. Not when the DVD player and the remote refused to talk to each other and both of them didn't want anything to do with the television. Not when his sister "accidentally" ordered a set of alien sex toys via the intergalactic cable he hadn't yet shut off and broke a dozen laws doing it. Not even when he'd had to nearly exhaust himself tearing the open gate to _Mars_ Dairine had left open out of its moorings in the planetarium. But there wasn't anything he could do about it except get through this maze and get his partner back. Kit spent another ten seconds glaring at the wall, thinking the curses in his head, then turned around grimly.

He could do this. No. Not could. He was _going_ to. He'd dealt with worse than this hunk of chatty rock and eye-blinking plants and nasty tricks, more than once. And nothing, especially said hunk of rock, was going to get between him and finding her.

He pushed his way out of the tunnel.... and his breath froze in his throat as he stared up at dark buildings with blank, malevolent glassy 'eyes', echoing dark steel-and-glass towering up over him -- //It can't be, I would have seen it from the hill!// The prayerful thought slammed through his brain even as that same dark sense of being _watched_ settled in right between his shoulderblades and in the pit of his stomach. The fear froze him to stillness for long moments, just as it had that first time.

He didn't have Nita. He didn't have Fred. There wouldn't even be a Lotus in here -- because this _wasn't_ the real city, Kit told himself. Looking more closely, he could see that. He could see that only the closest buildings even really seemed like it. This wasn't really that twisted copy of his city. Something _was_ watching him -- someThing, maybe, even.

But this wasn't that awful Other New York ruled by the Dark Book and _It_. It wasn't. It was just... this place was using his nightmares, Kit realized. Oh, God, Nita.

There were things about Nita that Kit was just never going to get. His nightmares were bad enough, especially after Darryl, but Nita -- Kit had never fought the Lone One for his mother's life. It wasn't _Kit_ who had been reading from the Book and looking up into the Lone One's face, changing Its name and Its reality. It wasn't Kit's sister who'd been lying so still Kit had thought she was dead on a red, glassy planet. It wasn't Kit who had been the Silent Lord, even though Kit had known that he wasn't going to just let Nita die. He couldn't break the Song and have millions of people die, but he could go with her.

Nita's nightmares were worse, and when he got hold of that smirking, bad eighties pop-star reject that needed some serious dental work...

Kit's face set. Something was going to bleed once he caught up with it -- or It -- and it wasn't going to be him. Or Nita. Or Sarah. But to be _able_ to give the Goblin King the piece of his mind and Will he intended, he had to get through this -- he wanted, so badly, to be able to mock what he was standing in. He wanted to be able to call it false, and half-assed, and nothing but a bad copy... but still that aching sense of menace sat where he couldn't touch it, or do enough to force it away -- version of one of the worst days of his life. //All right, it's the City,// Kit told himself. //Let's head for City Center.//

Kit started walking, and he felt very small under the gaze of whatever was watching him. No Nita, no Fred, no Lotus, not much wizardry Kit would be willing to trust... but he'd made it through Its city when it was the real thing, and this was just a maze trying to scare him.

Kit felt very small, but pieces of the Labyrinth scooted away as he approached.

That salved his pride some, but 'pride goeth before a fall' and 'overconfidence will kill you' had both long since been drummed into his head. He'd just take what he could get, and get _moving_. At least he could run, here.

New York wasn't a maze. Couldn't be, at least not for him, but Kit didn't grin. He just ran faster, because if it wasn't a maze that just meant something else would get thrown in his way. And they were running short on time.

***

Jareth was very, very carefully not using anything of his to keep an eye on what Sarah -- or the pair of young wizards -- were doing in his Labyrinth. He didn't want to know where she was, or how she was doing. He didn't want to be tempted to interfere. And in any case, he had his hands more than slightly full with three of his subjects and Aaron. He was far too busy with his goblin babe to be watching... guests.

He could understand why Melissa had been so desperate to wish the child away, really. Children were _work_ , and could be as much nightmare as dream, if they hadn't been dreamed of to begin with. Why Sarah had wanted him _back_ so badly... that was the part that he couldn't understand. Why on earth one human baby that wasn't even hers, and wasn't wanted by his own mother, had mattered enough to her that she'd _wept_ , when nothing he had done had ever made her cry the first time. Some of her tears had just made her more beautiful, in the times he had watched her wake with his name on her lips and fear in her eyes... but those tears had been like talons at his throat.

"What's so special about you?" Jareth murmured to the boy on his lap, lips close to the baby's ear. "What makes her care so much about you?"

He shook his head, bouncing the baby slowly on his knee as he tried, again, to understand her baffling mindset; why it had hurt her so much to have this stranger-child wished away. He didn't think she had ever even seen this boy before. It wasn't as though that brave, defiant little mother -- Melissa -- had been family of some sort.

Jareth hoped that he would not hear from Melissa again. Mothers who had wished away their children had, in the past, ended up wishing themselves away as well, from their families' reprisals if nothing else. Though she did still have a claim on him for the gift of her child -- well. They would see.

He barely noticed the goblins that were chasing a chicken in that corner, or the ones that were baiting each other into a game of who could chug the most ale -- old, familiar noises not worth paying any attention to in comparison to this prob --

His head came up as he felt the Labyrinth shift massively, multiple times in different areas, and the awareness of new landscapes within its boundaries caught him almost by surprise. "Well," Jareth said quietly. "It looks like our pair of new wizards has gotten themselves into trouble, hmm, goblin babe?"

Aaron gurgled up at him, clapping his small, pudgy hands, and Jareth rose to look out of one of the castle's many windows.

"Problems with heights, little wizards?" he asked the air, looking out at the new canyon cutting through what had been a perfectly lovely stone circle-maze, and the shimmering mirrors that were reflecting... quite the cityscape where part of it had fallen into disrepair, before. "What _have_ you two been dreaming about, to bring that up... ?" He might just have to see if he could find out, at some point later. But that great canyon... he might see if the Labyrinth wanted to _keep_ that. Oh, the bridges they could build over it, thin and frail...

Jareth smiled, the sort of edged, vicious smile that would make someone watching wonder how far they would have to run to avoid those teeth, and tucked Aaron closer in against his chest as he hummed to himself, looking out over his domain's new and fascinating features. That was the one mildly useful thing about having a wizard or two -- or even a truly strong potential -- inside it. They had the strength of will to create from _their_ dreams their worst challenges.

He wondered what Sarah was making.

He was not looking. This was her Ordeal. She had to make it, or not, all on her own -- which reminded him that he needed to go and make sure that all three of her old friends were far, far away from her in other corners of the Labyrinth. He didn't trust the gatekeeper to stay away from her, even after Jareth had used small words to explain why he could not help her this time. And the Labyrinth's rocks had always had entirely too strong a relationship with that red-furred mammoth creature that was so very fond of her. If they got to talking, despite his warnings.... yes, he had things to do, to ensure that her success or failure was by her own strength or weakness. "Come along, Aaron. Let's go see some of her friends while we wait."

Six hours and thirteen minutes left, Jareth thought, and he wasn't sure if he hoped Sarah was close or hoped that she wasn't.

***

Sarah wasn't sure how long she had been following Twid when she heard something -- the quiet, high-pitched sounds of something in pain. Twid made a face, looking in the direction of the noises, but she said nothing as she kept trotting along.

The noises, though, got louder, as if something had heard the footsteps and was trying to get attention. "..ey... 'elp...."

"Shouldn't we stop to help whoever that is?" Sarah asked, pausing to look over in the direction she thought the plea was coming from.

"Did you hear something, feet? No, just noises in the woods, head," Twid said, shaking her head from side to side. "Silly ears, hearing things what be not there..."

Sarah glared at Twid. "Well, _I'm_ going to help. You can keep going if you want." She left the path, looking for whatever was asking for help. It wasn't long, as she followed those noises, before she saw the uprooted mass of dark earth and tangled roots that stretched well up over her head, a sure sign of one of the great old trees having fallen. The old cypress had dragged other small trees down with it... not too long ago, from the look of it. As she went around the roots, the first thing she saw was a bright pink-purple foot flopping under the full weight of its trunk.

Sarah stopped dead, staring at the limb wriggling under the tree's weight. One of _those_? Yuerk!

She couldn't keep from looking, though, and she slowly spotted the other pieces of the Fiery pinned under parts of the trunk and the wide-spread limbs. All of it seemed to be trapped by the tree's fall, except for one small, brightly furry neon pink hand and wrist. That bit had apparently been knocked free, and was scrabbling around the head, trying to free it from the branches by tugging at them. The attempt was obviously futile, given the fact that the crooked, broken branches were broader than its wrist was. "Hey..." the head said loudly, voice ranging through entire octaves on the cry, blazing eyes looking at her. "Help, little lady?"

Sarah _hated_ Fieries. She'd tried not to, after the Labyrinth, but she'd had more nightmares about them than she'd had about anything else in the Labyrinth. The bog, the monstrous golem, even the Helping Hands... none of them had left her with as many fears as those wild, dancing fire-spirits that had wanted to pull her head off and play with it had.

Except Jareth.

But she couldn't just leave something trapped, even though -- she'd wandered off the path, and this was going to take so much time, and... it needed help. It was in pain, and it was scared. "Sure," Sarah said softly, in a reassuring tone, and started carefully extricating the Fiery's head from the broken branches.

It rolled its eyes in relief at her, ears waggling as it chanted. "Stuck-stuck stuck, no-one else comes help, all alooone..." It trailed the alone off into a whimpering end.

"Know you!" It cried after a moment of silence, watching her move, then added in tones of aggravated bewilderment that made her think possibly the right word might be he, instead. "You throwed me, little lady! That's against the rules, that is!"

"You still can't take my head," Sarah told it, finally getting the head slipped loose of the tree. She let go of it, and turned to locate the next piece of its body. Now she just had the rest of it to work on -- her head came up fast, her body half-rising, as she heard a baby's wail. Aaron? It had to be, no other human baby would be here, Aaron might be _close_ \--

"Why not? Heads are for games..." the head bounced next to her, staying at roughly eye level as it questioned her by flapping its ears.

"I'm using it," Sarah said absently, torn between getting to Aaron as fast as she could no matter what she had to leave behind and finishing what she'd started.

"...so? Why _don't_ your head come off?"

"I'm human. Our heads are supposed to stay attached, like the rest of us," Sarah explained, letting out a breath. She was used to babies crying, and that scream was the noise of a baby that was cranky and upset -- not in pain, or afraid -- and wanted his mother.

Sarah couldn't give him his mother. She had her own life, and she didn't want him. But she could give him _her_ , at least for right now, and... the Fiery needed help.

Aaron needed her.

Except that he wasn't in pain, and he wasn't afraid, he was just a grumpy baby, and here was where she was. With something that needed her help, no matter how much she wanted to just leave it there until one of its gang could show up. Sarah blew her nose on her sleeve and went after an arm caught between a rock and a branch.

"That don't seem fun. Booooring," the Fiery said, but it flapped its ears to get closer, looking at the joint of her neck with curious, oddly blazing eyes.

"It works for us."

"Shoulders are stuck under dere," the head told her, while the arm she'd just freed twisted around in her hand to point out where the head meant.

"How many pieces do you come _into_?" Sarah asked, exasperated and a little creeped out. She hadn't actually meant to drop its arm. But she supposed it didn't matter too much, since the arm -- eurgh -- just twisted itself back upright.

"Lots!" the Fiery said happily, as its hand and arm started working on getting the torso-part -- which still had the upper part of that arm -- freed of one of the forks of the branches. As the torso itself was wriggling, it seemed as though they might have luck with that fairly soon.

Sarah went after the hip piece, getting it free with some determined yanking on one of the spars of the branch, then went after the legs, since its arms were working on its upper body. This shouldn't take too much more time, with it helping her leverage some of the branches off. The problem, though, was that the legs -- or at least one of them, the one she could see -- were caught right under the main part of the trunk, and this had been a big old cypress, thick and heavy enough to completely ignore all of her efforts to shift it.

Sarah growled under her breath. "I don't suppose this could've been _easy_ , nooo, it just had to be something that would... take... time... " Her eyes widened. Had this been set up? Sarah hadn't even considered the possibility, even when she'd heard Aaron crying.

The Fiery finally retrieved its shoulders and torso pieces and bounced together, then hand-walked over to her and started scratching at the ground with quick, deep rakes of those long claws, trying to dig into the deep leaf-litter and loamy soil.

"Trying to go under the tree?" Sarah asked it, ignoring her suspicion. Setup or not, this thing still needed her help for a little longer.

"Can't move tree, dummy," the Fiery rolled its eyes, flame dancing in them. "Got to get legs. Can't play cricket without legs for bats," it complained.

Sarah rolled her eyes right back at it, matching its disdainful tone. "I noticed I can't move the tree. I was asking if you were trying to go _under_ it to get your legs back." She wasn't going to comment on the insult.

"Over not going to work, must be going under."

Sarah eyed the tree, and the rocks and dirt under it. How much of what was in there could she talk to, maybe persuade to move a little? She wasn't going to know until she tried, and unless she could talk the tree into moving- - which looked very unlikely... "Hey," Sarah murmured in the Speech. "Don't you get bored of sitting there all the time? Wouldn't you rather move a little?"

The earth rumbled and rustled, but where the Fiery was digging, it moved a little easier. Sarah grinned in relief and pride, and kept talking to the dirt about sliding, about all the different ways it could move, petting it gently as she did. "Thanks," she whispered, when the Fiery had managed to retrieve its legs -- both of them had apparently been under there. Of course, as soon as the Fiery had its legs, it broke into dancing, singing a thoroughly bawdy, very off-color song about shaking out the knots as it did. Sarah shook her head, trying to ignore the particular words of the song as she got back to her feet. "Well, I guess I better keep going, now that you're loose."

The Fiery reached out to catch her hands, trying to sweep her into its dancing as it boogied, shaking all of its bits. "No, don't go, little lady!" it cried, spinning her around, caroling more lines of its song.

"I have to," Sarah said sharply, pulling loose from its grasping hands, from the desire to just let go and "chilly down" with it. She wasn't tempted, not now. There'd been times, in the last few years, that she would have taken the Fiery up on the dance, but she couldn't do that to Aaron. Not when she'd already stopped so often. She had to think about more than herself. "I have to get to the castle beyond the goblin city."

It tried one more time to catch her, then stopped, its ears drooping down along its jaws. "You be no fun," it told her unhappily.

"Jareth doesn't think so," Sarah said lightly, watching to see whether the Fiery would react to Jareth's name.

The Fiery's eyes sparked brighter. "Kingy? Bah, Kingy and palace and floofy shirts," it stuck its tongue out, making a loud raspberry noise of disdain. "But not good to keep Hisself waiting, either."

"No, I didn't think so," Sarah agreed, though the one she was worried about wasn't Jareth. "The path I came from... is that the way to the castle?"

"One of. Good as any," it said, not pausing in its dance as it snapped its fingers and _glared_ at the tree, part of which suddenly burst into flame. All along the line of the trunk highest in the air, flames danced along with the beat of the Fiery's song.

Sarah blinked. She'd forgotten they could do that, but... "Put it out," she urged, "you'll set the rest of the forest on fire."

"Will not, little lady! Make good fire to call others, though!"

Others? Now, Sarah thought, was a very good time to get back to the path, since -- if she could trust the Fiery not to have been lying -- it hadn't been a trap. The last thing she wanted was to be caught in an entire gang of the Fierys.

She found her way back to the path fairly quickly. There was no Twid, now, not still there waiting, and not where she could hear her prattling on to herself, but the path was there, and it led on along the way. When it opened out onto a more familiar landscape, Sarah looked up in horror at the ruddy sun low in the sky, and on the other horizon, the crystal moon was already rising.

She didn't start running. It was too easy to miss something that way, and the Labyrinth loved to trick people with their own minds. But she started moving a lot faster.

***

Nita hadn't seen anything. Nothing had come at her, nothing had talked to her, nothing in the entire city appeared to be alive except for her. She thought she might have preferred it when it had been her mother -- Nita had had Pralaya, even if she couldn't trust him for What was in him, and she'd had... she'd at least had _something_. Like this, Nita was just trudging through dirty, stagnant, _cold_ water, towards the center of the city that might not qualify as the center of the Labyrinth.

Especially since the city and the canyon kept switching places. Nita would make a turn in the canyon and be in Central Park, but a Central Park that hadn't been this bad even on Ordeal. Then she'd make a turn on a side street and be back in the canyon waiting for the krakens. The longer she walked, taking the turns that should lead her the right way, center-wards, the more she wanted something, _anything_ else alive to talk to...

She turned another corner, back into a street, and leaning against one of the lampposts was a tall, lovely, red-haired young man in... dark slacks and a T-shirt?

Nita stopped dead. There shouldn't be another person here, if what she remembered from the book was more than just a story -- which, obviously, it was. It was the Labyrinth and the King and the runner, not... not that One. Nita _knew_ that face, that lean body, sharp-edged and coldly beautiful as it was, even in casual clothes. Her fists clenched. This was better than wandering.

"Such a look," It said idly, watching her hands tighten.

"Fairest and Fallen," Nita said coolly, glad now that there was nothing else around. She didn't have to worry about Its tricks now -- except that this was still the Labyrinth, and they didn't know how wizardry worked here. Did It? "Greetings, and defiance."

"Greetings," It said, voice still just as easy and idle. "Though there's no particular reason to be defying Me at the moment..."

Nita looked angrily at It. "There's always reason."

"I suppose you would think so, wouldn't you?" It said, looking right back at her, watching her with an odd level of patience, for It.

Nita flushed, and her voice was snappish when she challenged It. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"That after all of the run-ins you and I have had, you would rather think there's always reason -- and not be without it. But you can talk and walk at the same time, and that would probably be wise, right now."

"I'd want to talk to you why?" Nita replied, trying for a calm tone. She didn't turn away from It -- no wizard who wanted to be a live wizard turned her back on It -- but she did start walking again. It wasn't dignified, but she was moving.

"I could always leave again..." It drawled, "but given how loud you were being..."

Nita stopped to stare at It. "What?"

" 'someone, anyone to talk to'..."

"I didn't mean _you_!" Nita snapped.

"No?" Its head tipped to the side as It walked along beside her, not attempting to lead her or dropping back far enough to follow.

"Why are you even here? I thought you weren't involved in this... " Nita settled on, "place," because she couldn't think of anything that summed up the frustration of the Labyrinth.

"I'm not. Normally. But Ordeals are My business... and you're helping her. So."

"It's not my Ordeal," Nita said, and smirked at It. "I got through mine just fine." Except for everything Nita had lost, and all of the things she'd learned about herself she hadn't wanted to know.

"Did I say it was?" It asked, cocking one brow at her slightly. "Hm... fine might overstate it a bit, I think?"

"I won. You -- " Nita thought about the look on Its face when she'd read, all that pride and that loneliness, and she'd _known_ It could be better than this, she'd known It could be something amazing. Wonderful. She'd been sure of that. She still was, even after everything. The Hesper was proof of that. " -- lost. Close enough."

"I certainly lost a possession or two," It agreed, a certain angry darkness in Its voice.

"How _is_ the Eldest, by the way?" Nita said, and smiled, because she couldn't think of anything that made her blood hum with exhilaration the way fighting the Lone Power did. Even if the only way she could do it now was like this, with nothing but her words and her wits.

"Why, you canny little..." It glared at her, darkly, but mostly without the menace she had felt from some of those looks. "No," It said, as if It had realized something. "Not you, your partner. That was all the scent of noon-steel, very little of your witch-wood."

It had been Kit's idea. Nita -- Ed, by the end of it -- had paid the price for the blank-check power request that had pulled it off, but it had been Kit's spell. "He does good work, wouldn't you say?"

"For some values of the term. And I will give him what credit a piece of spellcraft like that deserves. It was well done."

Nita couldn't have a better partner than Kit. She -- the first time they'd met, Kit's spell had been missing an element. Nita sometimes thought that he'd been right, and it had been her after all. Or she'd been missing one, and it had been him. She was stronger with him than she could be on her own, and the times this One had gotten to her most had been the times Kit wasn't there.

Which was why it worried Nita a little that she was glad he wasn't here now.

It walked along beside her in the quiet of the still city-canyon for a while, before it spoke again. "The Labyrinth is outdoing itself for you..."

Nita didn't glance at It, or raise an eyebrow, or react in any way. Nita kept walking. She didn't _want_ to engage with It. She didn't want it there, walking at her shoulder like It had nothing better to do with Its time.

She wasn't sure just how long she had been continuing to walk -- it felt like fifteen minutes, maybe ten, but this was the Labyrinth. It might've been thirty seconds, or an hour. -- before she couldn't take Its casual silence anymore. "If this isn't my Ordeal, why are you still here talking to _me_?" It wasn't that she wished It on Sarah, and she definitely didn't wish it on Kit. She just didn't want It being pleasant at her.

"Because she's occupied at the moment," It said with a slight shrug of one shoulder. Such a _human_ motion, she realized, strange for a Power that could be anything It desired...

She glanced at It, wondering just what was "occupying" Sarah with worry. "I'm not?"

"You're just walking," It pointed out. "And you were asking for company."

"I did not," Nita said again, growling, "mean _You_."

"You say that like I would particularly care..."

Nita sneered, looking over and up at it with irritation. "You're just bored enough to come talk to me anyway?"

It chuckled, the low, light noise mainly devoid of the malice she was used to. "Yes. My siblings, in Their infinite wisdom," Its voice was as much a sneer on that as hers had been a moment before, "orchestrated this Ordeal so that I have little to do."

"So it is just the Goblin King she's fighting," Nita said softly.

"And herself..."

Nita snorted under her breath. "That's the hard part."

"And will be, for the foreseeable future," It agreed.

Nita didn't answer it this time, continuing to trudge through the flooded city. It, Nita noticed, appeared to be perfectly dry. It was, indeed, dry, and It also didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave. She kept walking, biting her lip to keep from wincing when her feet started protesting walking in wet socks and wet shoes. She was going to get blisters from this, Nita just knew it, and that probably meant she'd been walking for too long.

***

Kit had long since learned how to run and keep his eyes wide open and aware of what was going on around him. He hadn't had much of a choice, between being small, Hispanic, and smart enough to skip grades more than once. The trait stood him in good stead as he bolted through the streets of this false New York, because he noticed something as he ran -- a very particular warp up in the plate-glass walls that shimmered, curved, every time he took a corner. He didn't stop, but he thought very hard about that shimmer, the warp in his vision. //I already knew this wasn't real, but... what's that? Why are the -- Illusion. It's an illusion.// The realization struck him hard. He'd already known this wasn't the real city. Seeing that the skyscrapers weren't even real at all, his brain just thought they were because this place was playing tricks on him, Kit stopped in the middle of the street. If he knew this was an illusion, could he make it stop? Show the reality underneath it?

He planted his feet square on on the cracked, broken pavement and closed his eyes. //That's not real. None of this is real,// he told himself silently in the Speech, repeating it in English for good measure, then went on. //None of what's in front of me right now is real, and I am not going to be fooled by this place any more. That city is not real. I don't know what the real is under it, other than another piece of maze, but I am not going to let this place keep me trapped in my nightmares.//

Kit was a wizard. That meant he was fairly used to feeling the world bend in around him, listening. He was used to persuading the world that what he thought was true was _real_ with nothing but his ability with words and his will. Kit was not used to feeling the world bend in and around him and _twist_ , warping painfully as all of it seemed to scream with pain at once.

He'd had the Universe throw worse things at him than the splitting headache that twisting was giving him, by a lot. But it definitely hurt, and the rocks and the steel and the glass screamed as if in agony in his ears, even through the music playing in the earphones. It all wailed in negation as he tried to bend it to his will, and wondering doubt struck him for long moments. Was he really doing right, trying to do this?

He slitted his eyes open, looking at what his will had already wrought, and decided that the headache was worth it if he could just finish convincing the false-landscape in front of him to be gone. He knew it was an illusion, knew even the screaming in his ears was just this damned maze fighting him... He let his eyes fall shut once more, and told himself again, //That is not real.//

Nothing he was looking at, Kit told himself, was really there. It was a _trick_ , something meant to slow him _down_ and scare him. It was all just a trick, and he wasn't going to be fooled. He'd faced worse things than nightmares. Much worse, more often than most people would have ever believed. This wasn't going to beat him. He clenched his jaw, focusing everything he had on banishing that screaming, the false city that was trying to trap him. It whimpered away into stillness, finally. He took more breaths, just to be sure that it had stopped, and opened his eyes.

He might have preferred the city, actually. Because this place really didn't play fair. He could see just the edges, high above him, of the city he was trying to banish. He could also -- and this was the problem -- half-see low stone walls at the level of his eyes, and between the two, the shapes of treetops wrote themselves in airy open patterns.

Three different things in front of him, and Kit had no idea which one was real. He really. Really. Hated this place. Trying to navigate things he could only half-see was going to take forever. But he wasn't going to let it trap him back into that nightmare-city if he could stop it. From the feel of it around him, he could.

Not real, Kit kept telling himself, and started walking again.

***

Sarah could see the junk heaps surrounding the goblin city in the distance, and now she did start running. How much time did she have? How much time did Aaron have? If only she hadn't stopped to talk to Twid, or help the Fiery, or if she'd -- but Sarah couldn't have not gotten Twid's berries or helped the Fiery get loose. It wasn't in her nature.

Sarah just hoped she hadn't trapped Aaron by her actions.

She ran faster.

It was going to put something in her way. Sarah knew the Labyrinth's tricks, and just because she was keeping her eyes on the city so it couldn't run didn't mean she was home free. She had to not trip, for one thing, if she wanted to still have a city to run towards.

***

Her feet really, really hurt, enough that even with It right next to her Nita hadn't been able to hold back a hiss of pain on her last few steps, and given the canyon... Nita didn't want to think about what might happen if she started bleeding into the water. Even just the little bit of blood from burst blisters might be able to call... something.

It paused beside her, turning a... she didn't want to call that look curious, but it seemed the most accurate term... gaze in her direction.

Nita glanced away from It, looking around for somewhere she could stop. For a minute, that was all, just for a -- ha! This building, at least, had big enough steps that some weren't flooded. For the moment. Nita splashed towards it, biting the inside of her lip to muffle the noise of pain.

It followed her, settling -- still irritatingly, perfectly dry, but Nita supposed it wasn't in keeping with the Lone Power's dignity to squelch through dirty seawater like Nita was doing -- on one of the rails a couple of feet away.

Nita continued to ignore It, pulling two band-aids out of her pocket and holding them in her mouth. Then she tried not to think of how stupid she had to look, taking off her shoes and socks and bandaging her heels before putting her bare feet back in the water. Nita shuddered. It felt almost slimy on her skin, not the clear motion of normal water.

It came back to Its feet without so much as a ripple in the water, and... waited. Nita glared at It briefly before she picked a direction at random and went back to walking.

She was getting closer to the center of the city, but every time she noticed something... almost fuzzy, almost unreal, about it from the corner of her eye It moved, or accidentally-probably-on-purpose splashed water in her direction, and Nita lost whatever she'd been thinking in a glare. When she looked again, the city was solid, and Nita dismissed the flickers as the Labyrinth trying to play tricks.

"What did you mean, the Labyrinth was outdoing itself for me?"

"You saw what it looked like before... typically, it sticks with versions of that. Pale red stone maze and all of its other portions. This," It waved a hand, "is more than it would usually do. Hm. Because you're a wizard, very possibly. It has more to work from with someone like you."

"It's only as bad as what you bring with you," Nita said quietly, and laughed under her breath at how Dair would probably snort and say Star Wars had done it better.

"Indeed," It agreed, striding along beside her.

What was Sarah's looking like, now that Nita and Kit weren't there? What was _Kit's_ looking like? That nightmare on the Moon, where he'd lost Ponch? The blank, dull, stagnant beauty of Alaalu? The Hesper's world before It had been able to finish incarnating? Maybe Kit's was like hers, a combination of nightmares. That awful, twisted New York combined with the hive, maybe. She didn't want him to be caught in that again. Not in any of it. But how she was going to get _out_ of this and find him, when she had very little idea of how to get even herself out of her own maze...

The most Nita knew to do was keep going towards the center, even though the canyon kept twisting her away. Backtracking cost her time, and... and how much time _had_ she lost? How little time did she have left?

It turned Its head, looking sideways at something... something she couldn't see at all, even when she twisted her head to as close to the same angle as she could.

She didn't think It would give her an honest answer, but she could at least try, and the lie It told might be able to help her. It really was getting a lot out of ambiguity, these days. More than she had ever expected. "What are you looking at?"

"Elsewhere," It replied, not in the slightest willing to tell her that her frustrating partner was not so far away -- if One looked at things in the right manner, at least.

Nita stopped in the middle of the street, eying It, then looked back where It had. If It could see elsewhere, why couldn't she? This was the Labyrinth, after all, and it built itself off of her. If her will was strong enough, maybe she could -- make it show her what It saw, make it show itself as it really was? Why hadn't she considered that before?

It knew that stubborn, determined look on her face _entirely_ too well by now, and had It been inclined to human gestures of frustration, It would have sighed loudly. Or possibly stomped a foot. It was going to do no such thing.

Nita wasn't moving until she saw what It had. "Come on," she said in the Speech. "I know you aren't real. I _know_ , and I have seen worse things than you, now _show me what you really are_." She didn't have time to go looking for the Labyrinth's kernel -- the piece of it that held the master codes for this entire realm, that if you held you could change the very structure of the reality around you... If she'd started at the beginning, maybe she could have pulled off finding it, but not now. She had no way of enforcing what she wanted except her will -- but Nita's will was very, very formidable.

The Labyrinth fought her, of course, bucking her wishes, but Nita felt an unexpected tiredness underneath its defense. It was unaccustomed to having its temporary inhabitants attempting to force their will upon it, but it was still very un-inclined to cooperate just because she told it to. The city flickered around her, water levels rising and dropping as it fought back.

Nita had fought the One leaning against the only unmoving wall in the street, and she had won. One maze was not going to beat her, not even this one, and she found herself laughing as she fought it. She'd enjoyed the war against the Fomori, a little to her horror, and she was enjoying this, too. It was so much simpler to deal with the Labyrinth like this, when she knew what the right side was, so much easier to just turn her will against it and _make_ it do what she wanted, stop being this trap built out of her own mind.

Beside her, the Lone One smiled as It watched that fierce pleasure spread across her face, heard the rising clarion of her laughter as she struggled against the Labyrinth's will.

Nita barely noticed that It had moved slightly closer. She certainly didn't notice the look on Its face. She was busy with her fight here. The Labyrinth was old, and stubborn, and it had its own ideas as to how it was supposed to be run. "No," Nita said quietly, the Speech's syllables making the water around her feet drain away. "Not this time. Not like this. _Show me_."

The Labyrinth shuddered, and with a rush of shattering glass the city shattered around her, falling in sharp-edged, paper thin crystalline pieces. The smile on the Lone One's face became a little _more_ \-- harder, sharper, more edged with something unnameable -- as she laughed again with the fierce pleasure of her victory.

Still laughing as it broke, Nita threw her arms up and lowered her head, protecting her face from the glass -- if she'd stopped focusing, even for long enough to make a shield, she knew the city would have reformed. Nita would heal. She wasn't going to let a little pain stop her from beating this thing, not when she was so close.

When she lowered her bleeding arms and lifted her head to see, shaking the glass out of her hair, her mouth fell open. Her first thought came out of her mouth inanely, "I didn't think Sugarloaf was connected to the Labyrinth."

It... laughed. Standing there beside her, looking at the glass shards in her arms, the blood beginning to course down from the cuts, and the stricken awe and confusion in her face, It laughed at her words. "Does this seem like Timeheart to you?" It asked.

Nita glared at It, looking down to start picking shards of glass out of her skin. Now that It mentioned it, the light wasn't right for Timeheart, shining brilliance that seemed to come from a crystalline moon on the horizon. But there was that edge to the world, the clarity you never got in a world caught in time. " _This_ is the real Labyrinth?"

"... as close to real as anything is in this place, I suppose. It looks as it does when no one that doesn't belong here is here," It nodded.

"I guess this explains the king. Jareth, I think Sarah said."

It cocked Its head to the side a little, allowing a mild curiosity to leak into Its voice. "How so?"

Her reply was absent, almost all of her attention caught by the Labyrinth as she turned in a slow circle, staring at the glittering, lacy stone walls around them. "He's beautiful. In a sharp kind of way, like you. He reminded me of the Amadaun."

"That is part of why he exists," It said, watching her turn with that fascinated, enthralled expression on her face, wondering if the enchantment would take on her. This was part of the Labyrinth's lure, after all. That it could be what you desired, as much as what you feared, if that was the better way to trap you...

Nita sighed, looking away from the shining beauty the Labyrinth had turned into. Bleeding, in jeans and a t-shirt, carrying ratty sneakers and dripping socks and her old backpack, she felt as dingy and shopworn as she had staring at the Amadaun in all his glory. "The Amadaun was dangerous. So's he."

"Of course. What use would he be if he wasn't?" It asked, then decided to go back to something she'd said earlier. "Like me?"

Nita blinked at It, then went red as she remembered what she'd said while she was distracted. Jareth was beautiful, like the Amadaun, and like the Lone One. It was too beautiful to be real, sometimes, all clean, sharp lines cutting through the world. She had seen It hurt. She had seen It screaming. She had _made_ It hurt. It was hard to remember that, later, when she was looking at It again, all cool poise and serene danger.

Nita had always known It was beautiful. Everyone knew It was beautiful.

It smiled as It watched her color, the long, slow lazy smile of a cat watching something that pleased it, and was content, for the moment, to wait for her to speak again. Over her shoulder, It saw the boy still moving, still caught in his own version for the moment, and ignored what It had seen in order to watch her. There were still droplets of bright blood falling from her arms to the Labyrinth's stone floor, coursing down the skin of her arms. Traces of pain were written all across her body, in the corners of her eyes and her full mouth, the way she stood... but she was too lost in what she was seeing, and thinking, to pay full attention to the pain. Beautiful that way, all focus and intent even with the color rising in her cheeks...

"Like you," she said steadily, refusing to back down or take back her words in the face of Its gaze. That was a dangerous precedent for a wizard. "Beautiful like you."

It just looked at her for long moments, letting her steady regard and the admission settle under Its skin, and then Its smile widened. "Well. Honesty in all things, my lady wizard? My thanks, I suppose."

Nita went redder, but she wouldn't look away. "You wouldn't be nearly as good at what you do if you weren't."

She couldn't quite tell what the expression was on Its face for a moment or two, then It nodded, expression clearing into amused pleasure again. "True."

Nita eyed it curiously, wondering. Had that been a trace of sullenness to the curve of Its mouth? She didn't have time to try and figure out Its motivations -- how much time had she wasted just gawking?

It looked right back at her. "Rare that someone admits it -- in more than my title, at least."

... Nita would be much happier when she stopped blushing for It. "Peach called you the Beautiful One. Fred said you were beautiful before you Fell, and kept it after." She was not going to repeat the rest of what Fred had said, not with It still staring at her.

"My brother," It said idly, watching her cheeks color in fascination, "is somewhat biased, if in a strange fashion."

"Sister," Nita said automatically, her recollection of the indignant shock in Ronan's voice when Nita had used female pronouns for the One's Champion making her smile.

"Micheal, Athene, 'Peach', Thor, yes," It agreed with her, fairly casually.

But then, It was a Power -- it had been as comfortable being Esemeli and her very feminine beauty as it was now, lounging against a pillar and decidedly male. The Powers went through names and genders like Nita went through clothes. They might favor one particular color or style over another, but it was all external.

Over her shoulder, It saw the boy again, and... Its eyes sharpened, as the boy seemed to see _them_. If the way he had picked up into a dead run was any sign, at least.

Nita's eyes narrowed at the suddenly focused gleam of Its eyes, turning to see what had caught Its attention. She relaxed into a grin, breaking out into a run. "Kit!"

With a long, sharp look, It vanished.

***

The multiple 'realities' in front of his eyes were giving Kit an even worse headache, and he'd learned a good little bit of time ago that just because he might not see something didn't in the slightest mean that it couldn't hurt him. His shins and forearms were going to be several colors of bruised, and this was painfully slow going, but...

Above him, the hazy outlines of buildings shuddered and... shattered, breaking in a silent fall of... something that he barely managed to avoid, and brought darkness and moonlight with it.

What the hell... that hadn't been him, which meant it was either Sarah or Neets. Two realities now, and a faint shimmer of an overlay that Kit couldn't see well enough to tell what it was. He picked his way gingerly through shattered plate glass, pushing harder at the world around him. The Labyrinth gave way more easily this time, like somebody else had been pushing, too, and now all Kit could see were low stone walls and the shadow of some kind of other world, the faint figures of two people outlined in a doorway ahead. Kit headed for them.

The more he focused, the sharper that third overlay became... but it was easier to move through once that solidness was there. He got closer, dodging around some of the walls, and his jaw set hard as he recognized both of the figures standing there. Nita he'd know anywhere, but that... //It wasn't supposed to be here!//

That made him run harder. He _knew_ that sharp-featured danger standing within feet of his Nita, and damn it...

What was she doing just _talking_ to It?

He saw her spin around, and... she could see him, if that yell and the sudden run were any clues. He picked his own pace up, yelling back for her -- and if this damn maze got in their way _now_ , he was going to _burn_ power, despite how much this place disliked wizardry, and give it something to chew on.

The Lone Power disappeared, and all he could see was Nita, barefoot and bleeding, dripping water on the shining stones of the floor as she ran towards him. He reached out, catching her around the waist under her bleeding arms, and pulled her in hard as she wrapped her arms around him. "You really _reek_ ," he muttered into her hair, her blood sticky on his arms.

"I know. That filthy water I was wading through... and probably the blood. And ..oh, _ow_ , those hurt, now..."

"What were you doing; fighting with It?" Kit didn't think so, not from how easy she'd looked standing by It. How... comfortable. And he hadn't just thought that about his partner. There was no way he'd seen what he thought he had.

"...I have no _idea_ what It thought It was doing, but It wouldn't go _away_ once It found me. And I'd rather have had it bothering me than picking a fight with Sarah. I know how to deal with It better than she does."

"But you weren't fighting?" Kit asked, eying the cuts on Nita's arms. "Those aren't Its fault?"

Nita thought about that question for a minute. "... in a roundabout way, they are? It was the one that told me what was going on, but... I'm the one that shattered what the Labyrinth was holding me in -- it bit back."

"Yeah," Kit grumbled, stepping away enough to rub his temple, but keeping his other hand on her wrist, "It does that."

She pressed her shoulder against his chest for a moment, but nodded. "Okay, now that It's not standing there just waiting to laugh at me, want to help me try and get the glass out of these cuts, and some of it healed? -- yes, I'll do that part, if I can." Asking Kit to try to work a healing spell -- more than the most minor ones, at least -- was really not the best idea either of them had ever had. She'd do a better job if she just did it herself, especially when she wasn't entirely certain that either of them could get to their Manuals, or have them work for a complicated spelling, while they were in this weird half-dimension.

"I think I've got tweezers in my knapsack. Hang on a sec." Kit normally carried a modified toolset -- screwdrivers, wrenches, bits he'd borrowed from Carmela or Helena -- just in case he needed it. It got tucked into the pocket of folded space the manual occupied. Fishing out the tweezers didn't take long, and neither did handing them to Nita.

"Thanks, Kit," Nita said softly, not letting go of him. She was lucky none of the gashes were too deep, and knew it. That didn't mean that the smaller cuts didn't ache and sting enough to wreck her concentration and ability to cope with the Labyrinth's total weirdness.

"Welcome, Neets," Kit said back, equally quietly. Then he grinned, a wry, watery smile. "Told you I'd find you."

"Yeah... you did. And since It saw you before I did, I guess you were even right."

Kit still wasn't thinking about that. How calm she'd looked, staring at It, and how interested It had looked staring back. He focused on picking glass shards out of her hair instead.

While he worked on her hair, she worked on pulling all of the bits of glass out of her arms that she could reach, keeping the fingers of the arm she was working _on_ tangled through one of the loops of his jeans. Once she thought she had them all out, she started working one of her basic healing spells, telling her body how it should be; whole, without those wounds all down her arms.... One of the blessings of self-healing, weak as it made her afterward, was that she wasn't going to have to suffer the pain of the wounds again to heal them.

Kit kept her upright while she worked, feeling this place leaning in on them and all the danger behind the way it pressed closer. Tom and Carl had been right. It didn't like wizardry, but at the moment it wasn't interfering. Good. Kit wasn't Dairine at her peak; he didn't have the kind of power it would take to hammer the Labyrinth into submission again.

She dropped her face on his shoulder once she was through healing herself, and just breathed through the shakes of doing that spell cold, in an environment that hated her working in it nearly as much as Other New York had. "Oh... ow. Better now, though. Are you okay?"

"Bruised up. Nothing big. We can deal with it once we're out of this place." He said it confidently -- between the two of them, Kit knew, there wasn't much they couldn't pull off. And if he was afraid, Nita didn't have to know that.

"Okay. Long as you're not cut up. Now... let's find the center of this place and get the heck out of here, huh?"

"I _like_ this plan," Kit replied fervently. He liked listening to walls talk, but not like they had in this place.

"Me too. Am I the only one that kind of wishes Dair was here- - don't you dare ever tell her I said it!"

Kit snorted. "I wish we'd run this when she was still twelve. She'd get Spot to beam us right to the center. I'm even missing Carmela and her hair-dryer gun," he added.

Nita laughed, catching hold of his hand, then shook her head. "Yeah... me, too. C'mon, let's go."

Kit started running with her, racing out of that shining room, leaving nothing behind but Nita's blood and foul saltwater. Behind them, a tall red-haired young man stepped out of the shadows, scowling, to watch them go.

***

She'd made her way through some familiar pieces of the Labyrinth with the crystal moon raising higher by the moment, and she wasn't stopping again. Sarah kept her eyes on the horizon, dodging half-seen obstacles before they got in her way, willing the path to stay straight and take her to the goblin city and the peaks of the castle. She had no idea how much time was left, but she refused to consider the possibility that it might not be enough. The moon was shining brightly enough to see by, which surprised her a little. She hoped, in the corner of her mind that wasn't aiming straight at the city, that Kit and Nita were close by. She wasn't sure she could run the Labyrinth again for them, at least not immediately, if they weren't. Her breath was already coming hard, sawing through her lungs, and the dust that came up as she ran had her eyes tearing.

The junk heaps themselves, of course, still moved in their slow, shambling gaits, the goblins hunched under them mumbling to themselves as they picked up more and more trash -- treasure, she knew, to them--and a flash up near the top of one tried to catch her attention. Sarah ignored it. Unless the flash was Kit or Nita, or something that needed her help, she didn't have time to care. The bar of the baby carriage flashed again in the moonlight, atop its pile, but she ran past unnoticing.

Sarah kept running, her feet pounding on the ground as she moved. She tripped, falling, but she twisted as she fell so that her eyes remained on the city, locking it in place, willing it to stay where she could see it. She scrambled to her feet awkwardly, still watching the stone city, and started running again.

She had half-expected a heap to fall on her, or a pit to block her path, but the road ran straight until she reached the gates. Which slammed shut as she approached.

Sarah took ten seconds to pant, her sides aching and her lungs pumping, before she straightened slowly, wincing, and ordering herself to start taking more runs with Merlin. If she would have to be doing this again, Sarah wanted her stamina upped.

She glared at the gates, noting that their design was different this time, and wondered what would function as their guardian. She stepped forward anyway, hearing the 'snick' of blades behind her that meant she went forward or she died spitted at the entrance.

No metal giant this time, just wooden panels drawing apart to reveal hundreds of crude arrowheads, spanning the entirety of the massive gates to the goblin city. Sarah did not give in to the urge to start saying every vile thing a childhood in public school had taught her. She stared at the arrows, noting their shape. Crossbow bolts, she decided, and carefully began edging sideways. If they fired, they fired, and she was no more dead than she would have been if she had stepped forward. She did not have time to plan, and she was alone. No Hoggle would come along this time.

It probably took five minutes to reach the edge of the gates. Sarah had hardly dared breathe as she moved, but when she reached the edge of the doors, the end of the arrows, she inhaled a deep, slow breath, let it out evenly, and took a large step forward.

As the arrows fired, Sarah threw herself sideways, out of their path, wincing as a few bolts grazed her and hissing when she landed hard on the dirt. She saw, glancing up, that there were no more bolts in the doors, and she rose. She took measured, quick steps to the gates, noting the mechanism of strings and bolts that had triggered the arrows, as Sarah placed her hands on the wood and said, " _Open_ ," very firmly, in the Speech.

It was not a request.

The gates swung open -- sullen and creaking, but they opened.

Sarah walked into the goblin city, moving straight for the castle at its heart.

***

It was easier to move, it seemed, in this Labyrinth that sparkled and shimmered around its edges like cut crystal, Nita noticed as she and Kit pelted down the corridors. While the shining walls were more animate, they seemed... less inclined to get in the way of the running pair, and they made fast progress towards what certainly seemed like the center of the Labyrinth. It wasn't long before they came out of all the shining walls into a garden that stood with perfectly pruned box-hedges and thick, lush grass... . but above it, still, they could see the spires of the Castle ahead of them, throwing back the moonlight.

"Normally," Nita said quietly, "You can solve a hedge-maze by sticking to either the left wall or the right, and never taking a turn that the wall doesn't bend with. I'm not real inclined to trust that, here."

"I'm not real inclined to trust anything here," Kit muttered. "Can we ask?"

"The day I can't talk to a box hedge," Nita said, her voice a little shaded with exasperation and amusement, "is the day you can't get a car to talk to you."

Kit snorted back at her. "So get with asking, Neets..."

Nita smacked his shoulder lightly, walking forward to the closest hedge. Her voice was gentle, friendly. "Do you know the way to the castle beyond the goblin city?" It was a formulaic question, but Nita was getting the idea that this placed, for all its free-spirited moving, was very set in its ways.

[Beyond us, we do not know,] the hedges told her in quick leafrustles and waving of branches. [We do not know the ways of stone. You are on the right way, you have found us.]

"Do you know the way through you?"

[Of course!] the hedges were mightily insulted by the question, and their leaves flickered huffily.

Nita grinned, but her voice remained calm. "Will you tell me?"

[Left, left, and left again,] the hedges answered her, waving their leaves. [We will show you, because you ask...]

"Left, left, and left again," Nita told Kit quickly before going back to the hedges. "Thank you _so much_ ," she murmured to them gratefully.

[You are welcome,] the hedges told her. [To the stone, speak? It crowds our roots,]

"I will," Nita promised.

[We will show.] The hedges said again, rustling gratefully.

Kit looked at her, "You will what?"

"Talk to the rock and get it to move. The plants are too crowded." Nita frowned idly; they didn't look as happy as they ought to. Their leaves were a little paler than she'd like -- yeah, she wanted more space for them. More water wouldn't hurt, either. She couldn't do anything about the water, but she and Kit could do something about the rock they were rooting right above..

"Guess that's my part," Kit said and dropped down, laying his free hand spread out on the ground, felt the rock just under the earth, and said to it quietly, "Hey there," in the Speech. "How're you?"

The rocks' reply came slowly, warm with the sun's leftover heat from hours earlier and calm with the patience of stone. [We are well. We serve our purpose.]

"Yes you do," Kit agreed, appreciating their solid stability for long moments. "Do you know that you're crowding the roots of these hedges?"

[They chose their place,] the rocks answered, indignation obvious even in the slow, stolid response of stone. [They walked in, pushed us aside, settled here. We were comfortable where we were.]

Kit sighed, and looked up at Nita with a wince. "We've got a problem here. The rocks say they were fine until the hedges walked in and pushed roots down." Settling disputes like this one could take days, if not weeks, and that was time they absolutely didn't have. Not with that strange, almost crystalline moon standing well above the Labyrinth's horizon...

Nita swore under her breath. They had to go -- she didn't know how much time was remaining, but it wasn't much. But she'd promised the hedges. She sighed, and turned to the Speech again, saying to the hedges quietly, "The rocks say that you pushed yourselves into this place. They do not want to move more." She let her voice trail off on the last, waiting for the plants to respond.

[That is what we do!] the hedges clamored shrilly. [We move, rearrange ourselves, reshape the world. It is our function!]

"Even I heard that," Kit sighed, looking up at his partner as she rubbed her temples, trying to ease the tension the chattering of the plants was giving her. "Neets... we can't fix this. We don't have time."

"I promised," she said softly, hands on her hips as she glared down at the ground as if it would bend just to her temper.

"I know," he answered her, almost helplessly, looking up his arm at her over their linked hands. "But you have a hard time dealing with stone, and at least one of us has got to make it through here. I don't trust the bad pop-star copy to let anyone _else_ try and get either of us out."

"I'm better with plants. I might be able to persuade the hedges to move. Besides, the next maze is stone, if the rocks were right." Nita looked down at him, heaving a sigh. "One of us has got to make it through here."

"You're the one that got us in this part of it. I don't know if that visualization will hold if we separate, Neets." He took a quick breath, and shook his head. He wasn't willing to deal with the Labyrinth re-shaping again, let alone the rest of the tricks it might play on them if he left Nita alone again. "Okay. Let's give this the quickest shot we've got. You get the plants to see if they'll ease up their roots any, and I'll try and convince the rocks to open up a little more."

She didn't bother to answer Kit. Her agreement came as she talked. "I know you're only doing what you're meant to," Nita said to the hedges, their leaves stretching closer to her as she spoke. "The rocks are only doing what they're meant to, too. Is there any way that you can move a little, spread back out?" Ornamental hedges generally preferred staying in their set shapes, Nita knew, but it was the Labyrinth. They rearranged themselves all the time. And she didn't want to separate from Kit to fix this.

The hedges were silent for long moments, rustling among themselves in some silent, Speech-less communication... but they answered. [We do not wish to. We are in our proper shapes, and we must root deep to grow strong.] After saying that, though, they considered, and finally said grudgingly, unwillingly. [We have done it before. We can... root not quite so deep.]

While Nita dealt with the plants, Kit spoke to the stone again. "I know having yourselves torn up isn't much fun. And I know you were here first, and you were doing just fine at your job. But would you open up a _little_ more if the hedges didn't take advantage to go any deeper?"

It took a little more time than Kit would have liked, but he received a response after a while. [... If they took no advantage,] the rocks said finally, [we would move. If we move, and they root deeper, we will crush their roots.]

"Thank you," Kit told them in the Speech, very gratefully. It wasn't often that rock decided to be quite this cooperative, but he wasn't about to complain that it had. "Neets, they'll open up a little if the plants don't try and shove down more. They say they'll crush roots if the plants do."

"The plants say they can root a little less deeply," Nita replied, just as hopeful at this turn of events from the hedges. "I... don't think I'll mention that last part; these hedges seem like they'd root deeper just to dare the rocks to try it." She turned and spoke to the plants again, giving them the word that the rock would concede a little bit more space for their roots. The hedges rustled, cheering, and began shifting around, changing their roots.

"...You're probably right," Kit agreed, glancing at them sidelong. "If they're loud enough for me to hear, they've _definitely_ got personality, and not a real good one, either. I think we might have this at least under control enough to honor your word, Neets. You didn't promise them a solution, you said we'd talk to the rocks."

"Yeah," Nita replied, casting a last, wary look at the casually uprooting hedges. "Left, left, left again. Let's go."

They started running, and true to their word, the hedges helpfully whispered directions in rustling leaves as the pair went through them. They finally spilled out onto a rocky surface, and Kit froze, looking from place to place. Everywhere he looked, there were slowly ambling... people, though people with heavy burdens loaded onto their backs. Wearing fantastic masks and robed in bright costumes, they were hunched under the weight of the loads that glittered and flashed with light, but even with their burdens, they never seemed to run into each other. A way through was going to be hard to find, but...

"So much for stone," he muttered, looking up at the spires of the castle beyond the maze.

"Stone floor?" Nita guessed, shrugging a shoulder. "Or maybe they were talking about the city. You know how plants can be. Kit, have you got any better idea than I do about what's up with these people?"

"Nope," Kit said grimly, his shoulders set in lines she knew very well. "And frankly I don't care if they're goblins or Powers as long as I can get through them."

"I should've guessed you'd say that," Nita replied, relieved amusement washing up through her at that familiar, solid determination, and she didn't have to say a word as she started moving -- Kit wasn't a microsecond behind her.

As they wound their way through the people -- who seemed to only half see them -- Kit started to think that they looked kind of familiar. Every one of them that came close, the piles caught his attention. Baby dolls, toy trains, bits of furniture, shining streams of bright garland, battered books... "Neets. Do those piles look like the Eldest's to you at all?"

"Random shiny junk all mixed up with treasure?" Nita asked, glancing at the piles. "Now that you mention it, yes."

"Weird. Still no idea what's up with them, but at least now I get why they do look a little bit familiar." Kit didn't much want to spend more time thinking about it, but placing the reference his mind was trying to give him was always a good thing. You never knew when it might come in handy.

Nita nodded as she shrugged a shoulder. "Maybe they're just strange goblins. At least they're not actively getting in the way."

Kit didn't bother to agree with her in words. He was pretty sure he didn't have to, and besides, he was busy trying to get her out of the way of one of the wandering piles of sparkly junk that had suddenly decided to come towards them. It was easy enough to dodge, slow-moving as it was, and the city walls weren't much farther away.

Nita carefully didn't think that it couldn't stay this easy. This was the Labyrinth. If she had a thought like that, she'd make it true. As usual, her partner's thoughts were running right alongside hers as they made it through the last of the whatever-those-were and reached the city walls.

"... I guess Sarah made it through," Nita said, laughing under her breath at the hundreds -- were those _thousands_? -- of arrowheads in the piled heaps of stuff the closest masked people were carrying, and in the ground, and -- wow. "Seems like overkill."

"That might be the wrong word to use," Kit mentioned idly, looking at all of the arrowheads, and grateful he didn't have his hearing of the Speech attuned to metal right now. He didn't think that goblin arrows were all that likely to have anything nice to say, and that many of them would probably be really loud. "The gates are shut... so even though I don't see anything that looks like she got hurt..."

"We're _wizards_ , Kit," Nita replied, an odd triumph bubbling through her voice as she walked forward, noting the lack of further arrows. "Why not ask it to open? Besides, can you see this place not leaving some sign she'd been hurt? It likes scaring us."

"Because it's starting to load more bolts is a reason to ask it quick," Kit said, running the last words together. His sharp eyes had seen the outer edges of the gates re-loading as he followed his partner up close to it, which was more than enough to make him run all but the last few syllables of his preferred shield up into his mind. He wasn't as good with shield spells as Nita was, but with metal things...

Nita wasn't actually in much of a mood to _ask_ , but she couldn't simply demand it to open. "Will you open, please?" she asked the door, her voice quietly calm even as she eyed the reloading arrows.

It was long moments before the gates answered by swinging open, a disturbed, relieved [Thank you for asking...] in the long creak of the chains. Kit could hear the complaints of the crossbow bolts, but they stayed put.

"Anytime," Nita murmured to the old wood and steel as she and Kit ran through.

***

Sarah slipped through back roads and alleys, always heading towards the castle. Last time she had gone straight through, a conquering heroine. Sarah didn't want that fight this time; it had cost her time, and she had no allies. Sarah wanted surprise on her side, if that was possible in Jareth's realm. She could hear the tromping strides of the goblin guards in the main part of the city, the horns blowing and the baying of the most doglike of the goblins, the heavy tread of the goblin riding-beasts... but they were not in the narrow alleys where she slipped through shadows when she could. Jareth probably knew she was in the city. Whether he knew exactly where she was... Sarah was unsure, but she took every moment she was uninterrupted as a gift. She knew she didn't have much time.

Not much time at all, and she had to stop, squeeze into a doorframe and hide as a goblin raced from one dingy shop to the next, waving a torch that threw red light in guttering waves and yelling something incoherent about "she's coming!" She hid for another moment, two, then raced across that street and hid a moment, two, then raced across that street and hid herself away again, making her way up until she reached the castle's foundations. //Thank God it didn't put in a moat,// she thought to herself as she apologized to her still-aching side and ran across the open space to the castle doors.

These weren't open, either, and when Sarah placed her hands on them and hissed, "Open!" they remained shut, even when she pushed. Sarah snarled. She was _not_ going to be held back, not when she was here at the castle doors -- wait. One door had opened because she had asked. What would it hurt to try? " _Please_ open."

The doors groaned and protested, but she had asked... and their purpose was to _be_ doors, not barriers -- they swung open.

"Thank you!" Sarah said breathlessly, running into the castle. Throne room, throne room -- there! Through there, and up.

She was almost up the flight of stairs to the throne room when she heard the first, dark _bong_ of the thirteen hour clock. Sarah didn't scream denials, or throw herself down sobbing. She just ran faster, because she _might_ beat the thirteenth strike and she couldn't not try. The second, third, fourth, fifth strikes struck before she reached the top of the stairs. Strikes six, seven, and eight rang through the castle stones and her bones as she went across the flagstones of the throne room's antechamber in quick, hard strides, and she hit the open doorway on strike ten. The throne room stood empty -- and how could she have forgotten that Jareth never made things simple? That she had had to find Toby, even once she had made it to the castle...

That _room_ , the one that had meant Sarah still couldn't walk past Escher prints without shuddering... she spotted another stairway a few feet away and ran for it, almost falling up the stairs on strike eleven.

She scrambled her way up the stairs, the stitch in her side screaming as she did, but she made it halfway up the short flight of stairs before the twelth strike hit. Then up the last steps and into a different room than the one she had seen before, but still all staircases and gravities warped and twisted around themselves... and the clock struck thirteen before she could lay eyes on Aaron, let alone make the leap to reach him.

She saw Jareth in the next moment, but not Aaron, and the look on Jareth's face -- was that _regret_? -- had Sarah closing her eyes so she didn't have to look at it anymore, pressing her hand to her aching side and crumpling to lean against the doorway. "Not a piece of cake this time," she got out through gritted teeth, and did not let herself cry again.

"No," he agreed, low and quiet, and she didn't understand the tone in his voice at all. It sounded like his face had looked, and that made no sense. He wasn't gloating, taunting her with her failure, and it made no sense for him to be so... kind. He had been that way all this time, he had never come to taunt her or get in her way, and she still didn't understand why.

Sarah didn't answer, waiting until she could breathe without choking on it, but her voice was still uneven when she finally said, "You gave me a fair chance this time."

"You didn't give me a reason not to," he replied, watching her face and the way she panted, leaning -- collapsed, really, half-kneeling -- against the doorframe, pain written all over her body again...

Her laugh was strangled, and Sarah turned her head away from Jareth's voice to hide her expression behind her hair. "I guess not.

"Are Nita and Kit all right?" She'd lost Aaron, but surely they had made it. She wasn't sure what she could do if they hadn't. There was no way she could make it through the Labyrinth again. Not now.

Jareth twisted his hand, and glanced into a crystal for a moment before glancing back at her as though whatever he had seen was irrelevant. "They're giving some of my goblins a headache, chasing them around the city. I really should let them know to stop."

"Since the time limit's up." Her voice was quiet, flatly dull.

"Since it's over, yes," he agreed, his expression going vacant for a few moments. A bell hidden somewhere in the castle began to peal a specific pattern, and his eyes focused on her again. "There."

Sarah nodded, struggling to her feet and keeping one hand pressed to her side. It didn't hurt the way it had while she was running, but it still throbbed, and the ache of it at least kept Sarah distracted from her failure. "I'll get out of your way. -- Jareth?"

"Yes?" he asked, tipping his head to the side, watching her. She was taking this _entirely_ too well. It worried him. Sarah was many, many things, but calm in the face of loss, a loss she'd wept over before she even won the chance.... was not one of them. He took a few steps towards her, then stopped. He wasn't certain enough of her reaction to move that close to her, even as it shredded him to see her in that kind of pain.

"You didn't have to let me run. And you didn't have to not interfere. Thanks." She looked up at him then, and tried to smile.

"When have I denied you what you asked of me, if it was in my power to grant it?" he asked with a slow shrug of one green-clad shoulder.

She smirked a little, standing straight despite how much she hurt. "Is this you being generous?"

"Would you believe me if I said yes?" he asked, watching her.

"... This time? Probably." He had been being generous, to let her run at all, even if she had lost. Her defeat hadn't been his fault -- she was the one who had failed. He hadn't even thrown anything special in her way.

He studied her for long moments, looking at the careful perfection of her posture and the ache in her eyes -- and smiled a little more, eyes lit with her response even though he despised seeing her in such pain. She did recognize that he had been, when he could. "I had no other reason."

"... I know."

He smiled at her again, a little wider. "Sometimes you do listen," he said, then turned to look towards the doorway, where a trio of goblins were escorting two very wary, _very_ unhappy wizards in.

"I wasn't fast enough," Sarah told Kit and Nita dully, looking over her shoulder as they came in. "I appreciate your help."

Neither of them were used to losing, and Kit and Nita looked at each other blankly for long moments before one of them -- Kit, actually -- asked, "You lost?"

He sounded like he couldn't, quite, believe it.

Sarah nodded once, abruptly.

Nita's eyes shut, then opened, and she left Kit's side -- let go of his hand -- to walk across the floor towards Sarah, offering her a hand, and shoulder, in quiet sympathy. Sarah glanced at the goblins over Nita's shoulder, and she lifted her head proudly. She was not going to break down in front of _goblins_. She'd lost, but Sarah still had her pride.

"Go," Jareth said, not quietly, to the goblin trio, adding a flick of his black-gloved hand for emphasis when the goblins paused.

It took ten seconds after the goblins left for Sarah's face to crumple as she started shaking, hiding her face in her hair and Nita's shoulder. She didn't cry, not yet, just shook, and her breath caught painfully in her lungs.

Nita just wrapped her arms around her carefully and held her, giving her the comfort of another's touch while she shook with grief. She knew this -- she'd lost, once, even if it had turned out... She still couldn't say for the best, because _best_ was something very different, but it had turned out -- all right. She might not understand all of Sarah's reasons, but she recognized the wracking grief lurking under those tiny, silent shakes.

Jareth glared as that wizard female wrapped her arms around Sarah, and walked closer, stepping up behind her and off to one side. That was not her place...

When Sarah started crying with those quiet, choked-off, desperate sobs, she wrenched herself away from Nita to sink down against the wall, resting her head on the stone while she wept. Nita started to follow, but a pale-haired and green/black clad shape cut between them and Jareth was there, crouched down on the flagstones mere inches in front of her, laying his hands on her shoulders.

This... this was far more what he'd been expecting, and anything, even her still-painful tears, was better than that awful stillness from earlier. He rested his hands there on her shoulders and waited, hoping that she wouldn't push him away.

"Ja -- " Sarah started to say his name, ask what he was doing, but a fresh sob tore through her words and she simply curled in tighter on herself; the painful, wracking tears eventually beginning to ease into the kind of tears that Nita, watching, would call healing and Kit would call necessary.

He stroked one of her shoulders gently, his other hand just resting on her, light and careful as he stayed crouched in front of her, trying to wait out the tears.

Sarah wasn't sure how long she'd been crying, but Jareth hadn't moved, and he wasn't moving even through her hiccuping attempts at breathing. Why hadn't he moved, she wondered with a tiny bit of her mind.

//She can shove me away if she feels like it,// Jareth decided, and he slid his hands down and behind her back, pulling her into his body.

Sarah pressed gratefully into the warmth of his body, muffling her shaky breathing and the last remnants of her sobs. She was exhausted, her system presenting her with the bill of her run, and she just wanted everything to stop. How could she have expected to win? Really? She had succeeded last time because of Didymus, Hoggle, Ludo -- this time, with only herself, of course she had failed. A wizard with no real wizardry, and who hadn't passed even an easy Ordeal. How could she be a wizard now?

His arms tightened around her in relief as she pressed into him again, and he stroked his hand caressingly down her hair, trying to comfort her. "Shhh...." he whispered quietly.

Her thoughts of despair, of failure, echoed and re-echoed in her head, and Sarah tensed in Jareth's hold.

"What?" he whispered to her quietly, trying to understand what was wrong. Had she decided to push him away, now? After her tears had finally began to stop? Why?

It would have been easier, she realized dully, if those thoughts had come to her in another voice, but they hadn't. They had come to her in her voice, in her words, and Sarah smiled, faintly and with a hard edge to it, against the skin of Jareth's throat. //Well done,// she thought. It would have been so easy to believe the words in her mind. Sarah, at fourteen, had believed herself unique, the sort of girl too special to look after a screaming baby, the sort of girl who would have had the Goblin King fall in love with her. After the Labyrinth, Sarah had tried to erase that hubris. What she had not done was attempt to erase her own self-worth.

She did not give up. Ever. The only thing in this Labyrinth that would be trying to persuade her to was the One she had half-convinced herself she wouldn't meet. But if It was going to try and turn her from her wizardry...

Her own voice whispered in the back of her mind again, _Do you think so? Would It truly bother with someone that couldn't even pass such a simple test?_

 _You bother with everything, sooner or later_ , Sarah replied silently. _Fairest and Fallen, greeting and defiance._

She had lost to Jareth. She would not lose to It. Not now, not ever.

 _Greetings,_ her voice replied softly, with all of her own darkness wrapped around and through it. In that moment, she heard the times she had derided her stepmother, turned her eyes from her fellow students' turmoil to salve her own pride, lashed out at her father in her pain.

Sarah had known her own careless cruelty when she had confronted it in Jareth's face, and the uselessness of her pride in his ballroom, and the damage her unknowing, petty anger could do in the silence where her brother should have been screaming. She did not flinch from Its use of her voice.

 _Oh... very good._ Her own voice laughed at her from the dark corners of her mind. _So strong-willed, so sure that you know My ways and can master them in yourself..._

 _The **arrogance.**_

This time, Sarah did flinch, stung, pressing her face harder against Jareth's throat, his shoulder, shuddering in a breath scented with her own tears and Jareth's hair.

 _What?_ her voice asked lightly, a quietly gentle mockery in it -- her own tones with Karen about Toby, and to one of her classmates about her slim little book of new and poorly-written poems, and she had been so proud of herself then for the look of shocked pain in Karen's face and the tears in her classmate's eyes. _Dislike the taste of that truth?_

 _Yes_ , Sarah admitted simply. She much preferred having heard Jareth throw her own selfishness in her face, though she had not understood him until later.

 _You and I aren't that far apart,_ that voice said, soft and silken tones that made her toss her head, rejecting the idea that she could be anything like that One... She wasn't... she didn't...

 _Aren't you? Always so sure you're right..._ the silky slide of her voice, Its voice, honey-sweet, still all she could hear. _Who does that sound like, now?_

 _Jareth_ , she said, and hid the raw sound of her own choked laugh in his skin. _Taking things for granted, aren't You?_

 _What would I have to take for granted?_ It asked, and she could almost feel that particular cock of her head, the (so patiently) curious expression she'd spent hours perfecting to use when someone just didn't understand her and she couldn't imagine why, because it wasn't as though she were saying anything _complicated_.

 _I've had this. I've been through this. This is what the Labyrinth is for... and that's what I'm taking for granted. That I've already learned everything it can teach me. Isn't it_?

 _Oh. Soooo bright,_ It laughed. _So sure you can figure it all out, that if you just know the right rules you can change anything... that's all in your hands, now. The very rules to the universe will be in your hands. Do you want to know what you could do with them?_

A piece of her said, _Yes_. That was a piece of her that Sarah did not like, the portion that had raced ahead believing that words were only words. She had no business thinking anything like that, now that she had met Jareth. Now that she was a wizard. But what had been said had been said, and the answer flooded in.

In her mind, that staple-bound paperback spread open, words that looked like Arabic to the casual eye, all of the things she could _do_ about the mess the world was in hinted at in those words she was still learning to use, and It was quiet.

Sarah read, though she did not say anything. She found spells to urge generosity, spells that would have made Melissa keep her son, spells to force charity and goodwill towards men, spells to punish selfishness, and spells to punish murder and rape, as spells to prevent despair wrote themselves in the back of her mind... so much that needed doing, and, if she had more power, so much _she_ could do.

It was Jareth's voice that echoed inside the quiet corridors of her mind now, asking /when have I denied you what was in my power to grant?/

But she couldn't interfere with the Labyrinth -- she hadn't been able to prove her right to run (why had he let her?). How much less could she prove her right to such powerful psychotropic spells? She didn't even have the power it would take to make them work.

 _You could... all it would take is the right price..._ It whispered. _Or the right ally..._

 _No_! Sarah's reply was fervent enough that she said it aloud, as well, and she felt Jareth tense under her -- her fists clenched in his clothes, keeping him there. She needed him here to remind her what an arrogant child she'd been -- what, in some ways, an arrogant child she still was.

 _No? Isn't that what you wanted? A way to make things right?_ Her own mental voice, in Its use, nearly throbbed with the sincerity of that wish.

 _Not with_ you. _I don't want that with you, and I can't do it like this. Wizardry doesn't work this way_.

 _Mmm... we'll see..._ It murmured quietly.

She wasn't tempted. She _wasn't_ , and Sarah clutched Jareth tighter when she realized that the thought was incomplete: she wasn't tempted yet.

How did real wizards live like this, with It in their heads all the time? They knew, Sarah was sure. Wizards had to know that It was always there. How did they deal with it?

Nothing but her own fear answered her, now.

It was still there. But she didn't think It was actively there... just lurking. Waiting for her to slip up, slip back into believing she had the right to run the Labyrinth for someone else's child. Sarah exhaled, the gust of her breath stirring Jareth's hair, and let him go.

"Sarah?" he tried to catch her eyes with his, wanting some kind of explanation for the battle he'd felt raging under her skin when bare moments before she'd been exhausted enough to fall against his chest, unable to even cry any more. What had _happened_ to her, here in his realm?

"I'm all right," she said quietly, but she didn't move. Her head ached and her throat was sore. She'd cried herself dry, then fought a war in her own mind, and right now Sarah just wanted to sleep.

"Are you?" he asked, hand still stroking over her hair, not believing her.

"... I think so." Her voice was hoarse, and her eyes hurt, so she closed them again, drifting.

"You're exhausted," Jareth told her quietly, feeling it written all through her again in the limpness of her body on his.

Sarah barely managed a quiet laugh. "What was your first clue? Hey, Kit."

The light pressure of a hand down the length of her spine was apparently supposed to be an answer to her question, as Jareth said nothing in reply.

"Hey, Sarah. You... okay over there?"

"I'm fine. I think I might have won this time." For now.

"...always the hardest fights," Nita said softly, and a dark expression slid across her features for a few moments before she shook it away and smiled over. "The ones where the fight's inside, I mean."

"... How do you stand it?"

"You kick Its ass every chance you get," Kit replied, his dark eyes snapping determined fire. "It might be there, but that doesn't mean you have to _listen_."

Sarah half-lifted her head, shifting enough to grin at him over Jareth's shoulder. "I'll keep that in mind." She wondered how many times the Lone One had seen that sheer stubbornness on their faces. If It had learned to be afraid yet.

He grinned back at her. "Good. Do. Now can you talk to your perch there about getting us _home_?"

"Last time I had to win to do it. Ask him yourself. He won't bite," Sarah added after a moment.

Jareth snorted darkly, his hand still tracing over her hair gently. "Well, not _them_ , certainly. My conditions have been met," he said, and looked towards one of the doorways hanging half in midair, steps running to it at a bizarre angle. Bright sunlight spilled out of it, breeze blowing into the room with the scent of a fresh summer wind in it.

"Jareth... " Sarah said softly, exasperation and a hint of amusement in her tired voice at his behavior.

"Yes?" he asked, light, cheerful amusement in his question.

"Stop teasing my friends."

He shifted to look down at her, one inhuman brow arched curiously. "The door is right there. How am I teasing?"

"This is why I wanted to slap you when I was trying to run this part last time. Make it a real door," Sarah said sleepily, making an absent gesture in the door's direction.

"Oh, fine," he replied and waved a hand at the door he'd chosen and the door behind the pair of wizards, shifting where it had opened to somewhere more convenient for them. "There. Is that better?"

She lifted her head again, glancing at the new door calmly on the ground. "Thank you," she murmured, and dropped her head back to his shoulder tiredly.

"Why do I put up with you?" he looked up, as if asking the air, while Kit and Nita studied the doorway spilling sunlight and wind behind them warily.

"Because I listen," Sarah told him, lifting her head again. "It's a real door, Nita. He said you two would go home if you weren't in the Labyrinth proper past the time limit, he can't break his own rules. Ask him in the Speech, if you want."

"What about you?" Nita asked her, standing there with her weight balanced out evenly, watching the Goblin King kneeling on his floor with uneasy eyes.

Sarah blinked at her. "The runner always goes home, win or lose."

"She," Jareth said calmly, "will go home when she's ready. Your parts here are through, however."

Nita's mouth set, but Kit grabbed her shoulder. "Neets, I know how much of a pain you are when you're sleepy. Let's head home, okay? If she needs us, she'll holler -- she's still got her manual."

"I do," Sarah agreed, patting the backpack still slung over her shoulder in reassurance.

Nita glanced at her, then at Jareth, then finally nodded and walked through the doorway with Kit. Once they had gone through it winked out of existence with a quiet ring, like the tone of a bell.

Jareth shifted, lifting her up into his arms as he stood casually, and he walked through another doorway and into a light, airy moon-kissed bedroom that couldn't have looked less like hers if it tried. Sarah had yelped as she was shifted, the world moving dizzyingly around her, but she was too sleepy to protest much when Jareth laid her on the bed.

"I thought I was going home?" she asked, tilting her head up to look at him, wondering why she wasn't more angry at his presumption.

"Do you want to explain why you're so exhausted?" he asked, arching a brow curiously.

"I did just spend thirteen hours running around in your pet maze," she reminded him, regretting that he'd slid her backpack and its bottles of water to the floor -- which was entirely too far away.

"Not to me, Sarah. To your stepmother. Or father."

"Or Toby, or Merlin," she admitted. He had a point. She still wanted her water bottles.

"What?" he asked, wondering what that line between her brows was about. She was agreeing with him, why was she frowning?

"Nothing. I'm thirsty, that's all." Crying always left her thirsty, and with a throbbing headache. She wasn't fond of either fact, especially right now.

Jareth located her backpack where he'd dropped it, and a few moments later he pressed one of the half-full bottles into her hand, dropping the bag back on the floor.

Sarah smiled at him, struggling up against a pillow to open the bottle and gulp the water down, tilting her head back as she swallowed.

He watched the long, pale line of her working throat, looked at the way her hair fell back, the sharp line of the shape of her jaw and the dark arches of her black lashes against reddened, tear-stained cheeks... she had dropped the bottle to the floor and glanced back up before he could try to look away from her.

Sarah had meant to look at him and make a joke. Something. She couldn't say a word, looking at him looking at her.

She was not stupid. She was sixteen, she was pretty, and she knew she was. The fact that she had not had a boyfriend did not mean she didn't understand what it meant when someone was looking at her with a capital L. She'd seen it more than enough.

She hoped, very much, that her cheeks were red enough from crying that Jareth didn't know she was blushing. She doubted just as much that she could possibly be that lucky.

He looked at her for long moments, then his lips quirked in a small, teasing smile. "Listening yet?"

Sarah opened her mouth, then shut it again, shaking her head disbelievingly as understanding crashed through her -- incomprehension right behind it. "That was part of the _story_ , I was -- I am going to _sleep_."

Jareth smiled slowly, casually, and did not move. "Go to sleep, then, Sarah."

She glared at him for a moment, then ostentatiously toed her shoes off before rolling over and closing her eyes as she burrowed into the sheets. Jareth, Sarah wanted to make clear, was not even in the room. She was _sleeping_.

The fact that her heart was racing was completely beside the point.

Jareth kept his chuckle to himself as she settled so very theatrically, and watched her, wondering if she would really go to sleep, or not. If she did, he might leave...

She remained still, taking carefully deep breaths, and as the adrenaline drained from her system her breathing slowed to a more natural rhythm, her body loosening as she drifted off.

Once she was safely asleep, Jareth just stood there, watching her sleep sprawled out in the pale bed... she was so trusting, this time. Though he did wonder why, he would not complain of it. She was even lovelier now than she had been when he'd first seen her, barely more than a child. Not nearly so much a child now, he thought, looking at the fine bones of her face and the long, straight fall of her dark hair, the long curve of her waist and hip under the fall of the blanket...

It was a long while before he could force himself to leave.

***

When he could tear himself away from Sarah's trust, her vulnerability, he vanished.

He reappeared a few floors lower, back inside the Escher room, and picked up the baby that was already showing the signs of the change. His ears and nose were extending, skin darkening into more goblin shades... at least if he looked at Aaron through eyes that saw the mortal conception of goblins. If he looked at the other levels, there was little change, just the hints of the mask that would grow. "Come now, little goblin babe," he said quietly. "There are so many people for you to meet."

Would Sarah weep if she saw the child now? He was unsure. She had seemed to accept the defeat with better grace than she might have, but she had been so hurt by the thought of leaving the boy in his castle.... he shook his head, trying to push the thought away. It was not as though it mattered if she would weep. Before long, there would be no way to tell this goblin babe from any of the others, especially not once he could hand him off to one of the goblin females that enjoyed raising the little ones. He tucked him closer in against his chest, and stepped through one of the doorways and into his throne room -- which was packed with goblins all come to learn what had happened, if they had lost another babe to Sarah.

"The babe, the King has the babe!" old Hara cried, clutching her white hair as her leathery face creased into a huge smile. The others all roared with glee, and he laughed with them, spinning around with Aaron -- they would have to find him a new name -- held out from his body.

More of his goblins joined him in the spinning, bounding around him in fits of glee. Even lack-witted Bumpo was cheering as he sang, "babe with the power" -- as usual, painfully off-key. He tossed the babe out of his hands, watching as his Guard Captain caught him easily and began to dance around. This called for a new song, and he started whistling to himself, working out the words to the tune that had sprung to mind as more of his goblins poured into the Throne Room to celebrate the new babe.

This was a part of the Labyrinth no human had ever seen -- how much his people rejoiced at new additions. Aaron, whatever his new name turned out to be, would be well-treated as the newest babe among the goblins.

Even as he watched them celebrating, he saw one of the younger goblin girls slip between Hara and the Captain and steal the baby away, cooing to him as she danced her way towards the throne, a familiar look on her face. Even before she spoke, he knew what she would ask, and he was entirely willing to give her the baby. It was always better when one of them decided on their own to raise a new thrown-away child, instead of him decreeing which of them would.

He expected the party to rage through the night, and he whispered instructions to the castle to make sure that it did not wake Sarah where she slept.

***

When the doorway disappeared behind them and they were standing in the very mortal park again, Nita shook off Kit's hand, whirling on him. "Why did we just leave her there? With the _Goblin King_?" Her tone made it clear that while Jareth was not as bad as the Lone Power, she for one did not consider Jareth to be much better, either.

Kit sighed, looking at his partner patiently. Somewhere along the way -- probably about the time that the Goblin King had reached out and pulled Sarah into his arms -- he'd figured out what had happened at the start of everything. //Tell me when I'm older _the hell_ , Neets.// He wasn't all that good at reading sixteen-year-old girls, and while he didn't want to understand the old myth that had damn near terrified his partner just by existing, he'd seen that look before. Pretty often, really, in guys at school. "He's not going to hurt her."

Nita's voice was tight. "How sure of that are you?"

"...pretty sure. And she didn't much look like she wanted to leave, did she?"

That was the part that worried Nita most, making her screw up her face in a scowl: Sarah had looked completely comfortable, curled up half-asleep on the Goblin King's shoulder.

"Yeah, I don't like it either," Kit agreed with the look on her face, "but did it look like it was worth fighting about?"

Nita huffed, but she had to admit he had a point. "No. Not right now, at least."

"If she doesn't come back pretty soon, we'll see about getting back there, Neets."

"Can that be done without wishing someone away?" Nita asked practically. "I got the sense that no one went in or out of there without His Royal Majesty's okay."

"Yeah, I got that impression too." He grinned, just a little, at Nita's sharp sarcasm, and shrugged back at her, a darkly amused expression on his face. "If the Powers wanted her that bad, I bet we'd find a way if we had to."

Nita grinned back. "True. He's not a Power, after all." Just a nightmare. Or a dream.

"Nope. Hey, Neets, what time is it?" He looked around at the park, trying to figure out how long they'd been gone... it looked like either a full day, or not long at all, because thirteen hours would've been the middle of the night, and the sun was shining down at them. Bright and clear and a complete relief after that weird, red light of the Labyrinth and the glittering crystalline light of the moon that had hung over them in the latest part of the run.

"Eleven-ten, so we've been gone about thirteen minutes," Nita replied, shading her eyes as she glanced up at the sun. "I guess the Labyrinth is a little like Sugarloaf." Despite Its mockery of the thought, that was the kind of thing that happened when you walked into Sugarloaf.

"...Or has a really odd sense of humor?"

"I figured that one out," she answered, shivering slightly at the memory of her eerily silent run, at least until It had shown up. She'd had to put her shoes and socks back on when they'd entered the goblin city. They were still wet. Aside from her memories and the loss of thirteen minutes, that was the only proof of a thirteen-hour stint in the closest thing to Faerieland that could probably be found now that the Sidhe had gone back home and taken Their realm with Them.

"Yeah, I noticed it too," Kit made an irritated face before he shrugged. "Like the headache from all the rock yelling for me to listen to it wasn't bad enough, then it decided to give me triple-vision..."

Nita raised an eyebrow. "Really? Huh." She moved to the closest tree, sitting down against its trunk and gratefully listening to the tree idly talking to itself about its collage plans.

"I got pissed off at it trying to run me through Other New York and refused to believe it was real anymore. After a while, I could half-see the city, half-see some kind of forest maze, and half-see the stones. And none of the mazes were lined up the same way." He dropped down next to her, one hand tucked behind his head, and drew his leg up enough to rub at his still aching shin.

Nita smirked, leaning her head against the bark. "It accidentally -- or maybe not, It's getting hard to predict -- showed me that what I was seeing wasn't real. Once I knew that, pushing until it broke wasn't too hard... you'd probably tired it out some."

Kit rolled up on a shoulder, hand dropping away from his knee, and looked at her. "You said something about that, back there... do I want to know what It did?"

"... Not much," Nita said softly, glancing away from him. "It showed up. We talked. It left. It was kind of weird."

"I'm betting weird covers it real well," Kit agreed after a few moments and laid back down, trying not to think too much about that. Thinking about It and Nita at all was not something he really wanted to do.

Nita yawned, warm and feeling about as tired as Sarah had looked, and tried to fight it off.

"We are not passing out in a park, Neets," Kit told her as he heard the yawn -- and promptly followed it with one of his own.

"Are you sure?" Nita asked, laughing sleepily. He couldn't help but laugh along with her at just how in synch they were right that moment.

"... no. I don't trust myself to build the spell right," Kit admitted after a few moments to think.

"Can we put up a shield for long enough to nap?" Nita was paranoid enough to be sure that both of them asleep and unguarded was not the best idea possible.

"What, you reading my mind again?" Kit asked her, mostly teasing. They were used to having almost instant knowledge of what the other was thinking as far as a situation went, after all. And shielding was one of her specialties.

Nita laughed, reaching into a pocket for the component she generally carried and saying the last syllable, letting the shield loose. She'd kept that spell almost done all thirteen hours, and letting it go was a weight released. It wasn't her most powerful, not by a long shot, but then again Nita doubted the Lone One would show up as obviously as It had on Dair's mobile planet. She didn't need anything like the gimbal.

Kit relaxed once Nita had the spell up, and shifted around to get more comfortable, murmuring quietly to the earth about maybe being a little softer, right here around the two of them, just for a little while.

Nita listened drowsily and whispered her thanks to the dirt when it softened, then slipped asleep. Kit was only moments behind her.

***

When Sarah woke up, she stretched lazily, moonlight bright in her eyes. She was a little too warm under the light blanket, but didn't want to move -- blanket? She'd fallen asleep on top of the blanket, not under it, hadn't she?

Which only meant someone -- and surely she knew who -- had laid it over her in the night.

Sarah was still coping with the idea of Jareth having flashes of kindness. A kindness so prosaic as making sure she stayed warm was giving her a bit of a headache.

Of course -- and she went red as she thought it -- the way he'd looked at her was cause for much more of one. How was she supposed to deal with that?

Sarah wriggled her way out of her blanket cocoon, putting one hand up to her hair and wincing at the tangles she could feel. She didn't have a hairbrush with her, and when she got home... she was not looking forward to brushing her hair tonight. At least her shoes were where she'd left them. As her feet landed on the floor, there was a quiet giggle and a rustle in the shadow -- but when she looked, the room was empty.

"I was not," Sarah muttered, "Kidding about the goblin-skin boots."

Nothing answered her, but scarce moments later there was a light rap at the bedroom door. "Come in," Sarah called, lacing up her shoes.

It was, of course, Jareth. He stepped through the door, letting it shut behind him, and then leaned back gracefully against it.

Sarah blushed looking at him, immediately glancing back down at the floor to double-check her shoelaces, making certain they were tightly tied, before she hauled her backpack up.

He tipped his head to the side at the blush, watching her fiddle with her shoes, and wondered what was going through her mind, now. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes. I. Thanks for the loan."

He puzzled idly at what was making her stammer, but answered easily enough. "You're welcome, Sarah."

She made herself look him in the eyes, pretending valiantly that she was not still blushing -- the look on his face, when she'd caught him, had been hungry, fascinated, intent. Sarah wasn't sure if she had felt more like prey or like she wanted to look back. She still didn't know which one she wanted. "I ought to get back home."

"I would like to argue that," Jareth said with a quiet sigh, looking at her. "But yes. You probably should."

She did not ask why. She knew, now, why Jareth didn't want her to leave. Not yet, at least.

"I would invite you to eat with me first, but most of the food here isn't... quite safe for you." He shifted his shoulders a little, making a casual throwing-away gesture with his fingertips.

Sarah's mouth hardened. "I remember." How she'd been stupid enough to eat anything at all in this place, even something Hoggle had offered her... Sarah had read enough fantasy that she should have known better than to eat anything at all in the Labyrinth. Humans weren't meant for places like this.

"Not everything would do to you what the peach did." He defended his land, but his voice was mild as he did it. He did understand her unhappiness at the memory. "Most would have more subtle effects."

"But they would still have effects," Sarah finished for him, tilting her head. "All the fruits you could have told Hoggle to give me... why did you give me one that would put me to sleep?"

"Because if you had been even a little less stronger-willed, it would have been enough to keep you in the dreams I could reach... and even if you did escape it, it would cost you in time."

Sarah paled slightly, watching him and the carelessness in his eyes as he told her what might have happened. She had known how close it was, how near she had come to losing Toby. She had not realized that it would have been so easy for Jareth to have kept her in that ballroom, or someplace like it. That he was still so casual about it...

He lifted a brow, wondering why the simple answer had brought that kind of pallor to her cheeks, and waited for her to speak again. It was not as though he'd been successful.

"I had almost been too late anyway." When she had realized where the power really was, when his desperation had dropped the Labyrinth into her fingertips like a crystal bubble, the first of the thirteen strikes had already begun. If she had been even a minute later... if she hadn't found the storybook and begun reading from it when she had, if she hadn't realized the ballroom was a fake... "Of course, that was because you messed with the clock." That he was still so casual about what could have happened -- then again, he had no reason not to be, did he?

"You _really_ irritated me with that," he admitted, remembering their first encounter after she had made it past the oubliette.

"You," she bit off, " _started_ it."

"How, exactly?"

"Scaring Hoggle like that!" she exclaimed indignantly. "Trying to _loom_ at me."

"That blasted dwarf," he managed to keep his voice to only a mild irritation, and shrugged a shoulder. "Of course I loomed at you. I was what you needed me to be, then."

"... And what are you now?" Her voice was even, mostly calm, though it wavered slightly.

"Myself," he answered, much more evenly than she had been able to speak. And it was true.

Sarah nodded slowly, relaxing. She wasn't actually sure which Jareth was safer, what he was or what he made himself into, but she knew which she preferred -- which of the two was, as a wizard, her duty to safeguard. He might not be any safer when he was being himself, but at least he was no longer constrained by her ideas of what the Goblin King ought to be. Or, for that matter, by anyone else's.

"Shall I open you a doorway, Sarah?" he asked, his voice almost playful.

"That depends," she answered wryly. "Do I get to pick where it's dumping me?"

Jareth laughed again, all rippling amusement at her suspicion. "Where would you like it to 'dump' you?"

"Back in the park, please. I'd rather not have to explain why I was suddenly in the house."

He shifted his weight, straightening up, and the door behind him... suddenly wasn't. An open doorway back to the sunlit park -- and to the two obviously sleeping wizards -- suddenly appeared where it had been a few moments before. "As you wish."

"... Thanks," Sarah told him, stepping forward around him, pausing with her hand on the solid door frame and less than an inch from his shoulder.

He reached out and ran one bare hand over her cheek lightly, smiling down at her. "You're welcome."

Sarah shivered, jerking her head up at the touch to meet his gaze. "I.. am I going to see you again? Hoggle and the others said I could call them if I needed them, or just wanted to talk, and I'm just curious about -- " The last words fell out of her mouth in a rush, and Sarah closed her eyes as she leaned her forehead against the cool stone in embarrassment. "God. Forget I said anything," she muttered, her voice muffled.

"Just say my name," he answered her, the smile she couldn't see for her closed eyes obvious in his voice.

"Name. Gotcha. I," she announced, "am leaving, before you find some way to embarrass me just by existing."

"Would I do such a thing?" he asked, his voice... either completely innocent, or completely wrapped in sin.

Sarah shivered again, her voice not nearly as even as she would have liked it to be when she answered, "Yes. As fast as you possibly could."

//Only because you're so beautiful when you blush like that...// Jareth decided not to prove her point quite that strongly, and waited for her to step through.

Sarah took one more breath, smelling the dust of the Labyrinth and the smell of goblins and mostly the leather-and-spice smell of Jareth, before she stepped through to sunlight and the sound of barking dogs and playing children... normal noises.

//Merlin!// she thought suddenly. She hadn't even thought about him when she'd started running. How long had she left him here alone? She didn't even see him. She whistled for him, high and sharp... and no barks answered her. What would he have done, when she disappeared? If she were Merlin, loyal but cowardly Merlin, she would have run home as fast as four legs could carry her. He probably had done just that. All right. She'd see him as soon as she got home... but Kit and Nita were both sound asleep, right there.

Sarah walked forward and slammed straight into solid, empty air. //Okay//, Sarah thought, rubbing her head ruefully. //Shield. They're not stupid, after all. They've been at this for a while.// "Wake _up_ ," she said firmly in the Speech.

Kit's dark eyes snapped open, and he sat up a bare breath afterwards.

Sarah took a step back defensively, holding up her hands empty-palm forwards. "Just me."

Kit nodded, then glanced to see if his partner had come awake yet. Since it was her shield, he was going to rib her something awful if she wasn't.

Nita had her eyes open, looking with a raised eyebrow at the way Sarah was standing. With a quiet word, she dissolved their shield and tucked the component back in her pocket. "Hi, Sarah."

"Hi... have you two been asleep long?"

Kit stretched, long and lazy, while Nita got up, checking the sun again. "About half an hour, it looks like." Then she frowned. "How long were you asleep in there?"

"The moon was up... either again or still," Sarah answered her, shrugging slightly. "Not that that really means anything."

"I knew a minute per hour was too easy," Nita grumbled under her breath.

Sarah looked over at her, blinking curiously. "What?"

Kit nudged Nita's shoulder affectionately, grinning at Sarah. "Your buddy dropped us back thirteen minutes after we left."

"That would fit his sense of humor -- or the Labyrinth's," Sarah said with a small smile, shaking her head.

Kit snorted. "Yeah, we guessed as much." His eyes were sharp as they rested on Sarah's face, her sleep-tangled hair. _Hey, Neets_ , he said silently, making sure she would hear him. _You caught how she didn't say anything when I called Mr. Eighties her buddy?_

 _Yeah, I did. Why?_

Sarah sighed. "You two still look tired, but I'd love to be able to talk to you. Want to come home with me? It shouldn't be much trouble with Karen. ...Okay, you might be," she had to amend that after a minute, looking at Kit. "But I think I can manage something..." Then again, Karen probably wouldn't mind Sarah bringing a boy home, even one as young as Kit looked. Karen wouldn't mind Sarah bringing any friends home. It happened so rarely, after all.

 _Because it makes me wonder what's going to happen with the two of them after this,_ Kit answered slowly.

 _... yeeah. I'm not sure, either._ "I'm not sure how much sense we'll make, we are both pretty wiped, but. Kit, you up for that?"

"Sure," Kit answered. "Think she'll feed us?"

"If she won't, I will," Sarah answered, smiling. "But she probably will. It's not far." She started walking, and Kit and Nita followed, Kit hiding a yawn behind one hand.

While they walked, Nita tried to think of the things Sarah was likely to ask, the kinds of questions that new wizards usually asked... and what a wizard who'd come into her power a little late would need to know sooner than not. But there were other things to talk about, too; things like classwork and pop culture that would make her family feel easier about them being there.

***

When Kit and Nita popped back in and walked inside, Carl looked up from the wreckage of whatever he was assembling -- or maybe disassembling, it was always hard to tell with Carl -- to grin at them, though he did look a little surprised after a glance at a functioning clock. "Back so soon? How's our late bloomer?"

"... interesting," Nita said carefully, "and it's only soon from a linear time point of view."

"From ours, it's about sixteen hours later and we're wiped, but things got weird enough that we'd rather talk to you before we sleep for a week." Kit added his two cents to what Nita obviously thought of that 'soon' comment.

Carl's expression was wry. "That kind of Ordeal, huh? Give Tom five minutes to get back, so I don't have to take notes."

"Sure," Kit said, dropping down on the floor to stretch his legs out, back flat against a couch, while Nita sat down on it with her right leg close to his left shoulder. She didn't much want him out of her reach yet.

She was not going to fall asleep on Tom and Carl's couch, Nita told herself after the first few moments of that blessed softness drew her attention. She was not. At least not before she explained what had happened. After that... she'd still rather have her own bed, but she might think about their couch instead.

Kit shifted enough to drape his arm up over her knee, making sure he could jog her if she started falling asleep -- or, to be fair, the other way around -- and looked over curiously at Carl's project. "What're you up to this time, Carl?"

Carl made a face as he stared into the thing's mechanical guts, fingers twitching toward a pair of forceps before he stopped. "Attempting to pull out something I need for a spell. It used to be a cuckoo clock. I need one of the gears."

It was getting harder and harder for Kit not to offer to help with Carl's mechanical problems, but he kept his mouth shut other than the mild, "Good luck?"

Carl shrugged, fairly casually. "It's not an urgent component yet. Just something to fiddle with."

"All right."

Carl turned away from his project completely, glancing at them with those sharp, observant eyes that rarely missed much when it came to one of his advisees and their health and strengths. "Have you two slept? Had food?"

"Food, yes. Sarah's stepmother fed us. Sleep... something like half an hour? Maybe a little less, I had to talk Nita's watch into working again."

"Huh. Tom should be almost back."

Kit used the arm up on Nita's knee to nudge her a little, keeping her awake, and nodded. "The next maze I see, I'm going to... I don't know what, but it's probably not going to be pretty."

Carl snorted. "Glad I've never had to run it. I take it the Labyrinth's every bit as strange as the manual made it sound?"

"Stranger!" the two of them said in intent, loud unison.

Tom popped into the room before Kit or Nita could finish answering, and blinked at the volume.

"Hey, Tom," Nita said, while Kit lifted a hand enough to wave slowly up at him.

"Back so soon?" Tom asked, and Carl laughed.

"Soon from your end," Nita answered, taking the explanation this time, "sixteen-odd hours later for us."

Tom glanced at Carl, then at Kit and Nita. "So I'm not imagining how tired you look. Good to know."

Kit shook his head fervently, and Nita managed something that could have been a laugh if she'd been more awake before she spoke.

"Kit said we were going to sleep for a week -- that might be a little much, but no, we probably look as tired as we feel. That. Place. Is. Weird."

"What does it _do_?" Tom wanted to know, a writer's curiosity gleaming in his face. "I haven't personally spoken with anyone who had been in the Goblin King's Labyrinth."

" _Everything's_ alive, and all of it _talks_. All of the time. I had to borrow Nita's headphones just to drown out the walls, Tom."

"I've been on alien planets that had plants that were less weird," Nita added, nodding at Kit's words. "It started with the gate trying to hide from us, and once Kit got us through that, trying to find the hidden 'doors' in these stretches of corridors that looked like they went on for miles was just _so_ much fun."

"How did Sarah take it? Did it seem to be similar?"

"Yeah. It did, that was pretty obvious. And there were some plants that remembered her and were happy to tell me all about it," Nita nodded. "But she knew what she was expecting, so... I'm not sure it would still look like that to someone else."

Kit shook his head. "I don't think it would, Neets. Not after what it did to us."

Carl frowned at the serious tone of Kit's voice. "What did it do to you two?"

"After it forced us to split up? -- I started seeing that other New York, instead of all the different kinds of mazes we'd been in. Neets..." he trailed off, willing to let Nita say what she wanted to, or didn't, about hers.

"The Song of the Twelve," Nita finished. "A little, I think, of our Ordeal." She looked down, then back up, her mouth firm, eyes determinedly hard. "And looking for my mom's kernel."

Tom closed his eyes for a moment in sympathy, but then looked back at them. "How did it manage to 'force' the three of you to split up?"

"Sarah let go of me," Nita said with her lips tight, "and it dropped the floor out from under her."

"Wizardry doesn't really work," Kit answered him, almost overlapping Nita's words. "We'd tried the Mason's Word to get through a small tunnel... the rock started contracting around where we were holding on to each other."

Carl hissed out a breath. "So we were right about that part."

"Unfortunately," Tom added grimly.

"Healing works," Nita put in. "And we managed to talk some hedges and some stones out of a fight -- the Speech works _really_ well, except for the fact that everything has its own ideas about how things are supposed to be done."

"Must be because everything there is so alive... " Tom mused aloud, eyes dreamy, thinking. "I wonder why. Did everything seem sentient to you?"

"I don't think we saw nearly everything," Nita answered, "but everything I saw had a lot of sentience to it... except when it was mostly pulling from me. Then the buildings weren't quite as 'alive', but once Kit had started trying to make it be like it really was, and then I pushed even harder and broke the illusion, most things seemed pretty aware."

"You did _what_?" Tom and Carl said together.

"... we made it be itself, not the illusion it was making out of our own heads. We talked about that for a while," Kit said. "I don't think we could have done it alone, but both of us trying, _knowing_ what we were seeing wasn't what was real..."

"It looked like Sugarloaf," Nita said, and at the blank looks, explained. "It looked like the way the Sidhe lands under the mountain looked. Too sharp and bright, a little too real..."

"Not closer to Timeheart," Carl said sharply, once Nita trailed off. "It couldn't be. The Goblin King isn't a Power." He exchanged a wary look with Tom, as if seeking affirmation.

"That's what It said," Nita complained, looking at him tiredly. "I can't help it. That's the only place I've seen that was just too beautiful to be real. And Tom's the one that made the comparison to Tir na nOg about it, before we even left."

"... What do you mean, what It said?" Tom's voice was very, very soft. "It, the Lone Power, It?"

"It wouldn't leave me _alone_ until after I broke the illusion and Kit found me," Nita told him, turning to look fully at his face. "I don't _know_ why. That was Sarah's Ordeal, not mine."

Carl held up a hand, making her pause. "That One was present and active in the Labyrinth?"

"Ordeals are Its business, It said. And... after we thought everything was over, It went after Sarah."

"Not entirely active, then," Tom murmured. "There on Ordeal? Because Sarah was there?" He opened the manual, flipping through. "She's listed as active. She passed."

Kit nodded, "I checked that while we were talking to her." He paused a moment, then said worriedly, "Tom... It got in her head. Neets' right. We thought it was over, that she'd lost the boy -- and all of a sudden we knew she was dealing with that One, because she... she was turned inside," he paused, looking for better words than that, and Nita picked up the story for him.

"She was hearing It, in her head. It ... really is getting more out of ambivalence these days, Hesper or not, from what she told us about that fight afterward. She beat It, turned It down, though."

Tom nodded, looking thoughtful, but Carl held his hand up again. "I'd like to go back to the part where It was talking to you, Nita."

Nita sighed, but she'd never really been able to tell Carl no, and... it didn't make sense to her, either. Maybe her Senior would understand this mess better. "I was going through part of the City, and... It popped up. I don't know why. I greeted It, and It... talked. And wouldn't go away. Not when I talked back, not when I ignored It.... It didn't leave until Kit was there."

"It talked to you," Carl repeated, sounding stunned. "You ignored It -- ignored _It_ \-- and It... kept talking to you."

"It was bored? I mean... It kind of said It was. That the Powers had set this up so It had little to do, but It was there because of Sarah's Ordeal, so It showed up to me. I wonder if It was lying about that? No ...if I didn't talk, It just... kept walking beside me until I'd talk again." Nita frowned, not noticing the look on Kit's face as she talked, too caught up in her words and the remembered expression on Its face.. "It showed me how to get out of the illusion. I'm still not sure if It meant to."

She'd missed Tom mouthing 'bored?' incredulously, too. Carl said it aloud, even more incredulously. "Bored?"

"I was trying to get It to leave me alone. I asked It if It was just bored. It said yes." She shrugged helplessly. "I didn't have any of the wizardry I could have done to try and make It leave, and I think Kit would kill me himself if I tried that kind of spell again anyway..."

"Damn _right_ ," Kit told her, hand tightening on her calf. If she _ever_ paid down that much of her life on a spell without letting him share in the cost, he would, and then she wouldn't have to worry about dealing with It.

Nita smiled at him in response, noting the angry worry lines around his mouth.

He pushed his shoulder into her leg, trying to smile back at her. He couldn't quite manage it, not when he was thinking about the half-seen look he'd spotted on Its face... predatory, intrigued, fascinated. It had looked a lot like the kinds of looks the Goblin King had kept giving Sarah.

Even on the Goblin King's face, those looks were too familiar for Kit's comfort. Having It looking at Neets -- his best friend, his _partner_ , even if Kit still couldn't see why everyone looked at them and assumed they were dating -- in any way that even resembled that kind of look made Kit feel a little sick to his stomach.

Which didn't mean looks shouldn't be mentioned, Kit reminded himself: he didn't have to mention Nita, not with her sitting next to him, but Tom and Carl should know about Sarah and her buddy the Goblin King. Or whatever was going on there. "Speaking of weird things, Tom, Carl... the bad eighties pop-star reject that calls himself the Goblin King... he and Sarah seem like they have a _really_ strange... relationship?"

//Guess he's older,// Nita thought with rueful amusement. //I knew he'd figure it out. Darn it, I was hoping to hold this over him for longer.// "He let her run. After she gave up."

 _I_ heard _that_ , Kit looked up at her, eyes exasperated and amused, then looked back at their Seniors. "Her status had started to flicker, but... all of a sudden he was letting her do it."

"Gave up?" Carl questioned, wondering what the Powers had been thinking for just a second, before he managed to put the thought away. If she'd run anyway, there had obviously been a point beyond the obvious one.

Nita and Kit glanced at each other, then Nita took a breath and tried to explain. "When we showed up, they were... it looked like they were having a fight. She'd heard someone wishing her baby away and was trying to interfere. He didn't want to let her." Nita's voice hardened. "He said she didn't have the right to run the Labyrinth for someone else's child."

Tom's lips pursed as he looked off into the distance, thinking about that. "I don't think I know enough about the laws there to decide if she did or didn't."

Carl had his manual open, and heaved a sigh after he read through a few passages. "I can see the argument."

"She bought it, anyway," Kit muttered. "Backed off, said the baby was his."

His tone was a little indignant, and Nita smirked. Kit didn't know how to back off.

"And after that, he let her run it? Why -- or do you have any idea?"

"I have an idea," Kit said flatly. "I just don't like it."

"She was crying," Nita finished. "He looked like she'd punched him when she started crying."

Tom looked at Carl, arching a brow, and found his partner looking right back at him with the same disturbed expression.

"He asked if it really meant that much to her," Kit continued doggedly, because he'd rather hand off this headache to Seniors, "And she nodded, and then he said she had thirteen hours to get the baby back."

"Then he... I guess he made the doorway -- and vanished." Nita picked the thread up, and looked at the disturbed pair. "I don't know for sure, but I'd say that the bit in the storybook where the Goblin King fell in love with the human girl is real true, this time. Or something pretty close to it."

"Don't forget the part where she yelled for him to help her," Kit added.

"Or the part where we left her in the Labyrinth with him?" Nita sniped. She still wasn't happy about that, even though Sarah had come out apparently fine.

"Hey, were _you_ going to drag her out of his arms?"

"Slow _down_!" Tom snapped, and the tone of his normally calm voice had both of them going silent.

"Sorry, Tom." Kit shook his head, apology in his eyes. "Didn't mean to snap at you, Neets."

She reached to squeeze his hand, one corner of her mouth quirked up. "I shouldn't have brought it back up."

"Now," Carl said quietly, "Go back to the part where she asked him for help. Did he give it?"

"This was back at the very beginning, and I still don't even know what was wrong," Kit complained even as he nodded that yes, he had. "She'd been arguing with him, and... all of a sudden she just sort of whimpered, and my manual said she was burning a lot of power, even though neither of us had seen any trace of a spell."

"Was he doing anything that either of you two or the manual could pick up?"

"... If I had to guess, Tom," Nita said slowly, "I'd say he'd tried to leave. He didn't like us showing up very much. She was hurting, really badly, and... she said 'make it stop' and called for him. I'm not sure he didn't teleport to get to her."

"Eighties is _fast_ when he feels like it," Kit agreed. "What I'd like to know is how she was stopping him if he was trying to leave, since the manual said she wasn't casting."

"So," Tom said heavily, his eyes dark with concern, "would I. That shouldn't be possible without his name in the Speech, and no novice manual is going to have that."

"... she'd beaten him before... would that have given her something she could use?" Nita thought about it, trying to think through the faerie laws she'd absorbed over all her years of reading everything fantasy -- everything at all, really -- she could get her hands on.

"Maybe." The tone of Carl's voice was unsure. "Like we told you, we don't know a lot about him. He's not like the Sidhe you met in Ireland, Nita; he isn't a Power, at _all_ , not even a lesser one. But he isn't entirely unlike them, either. Almost a perfect fit to the human idea of the Sidhe, really. Capricious, quite powerful, whimsical. Dangerous. Without his true name or a geas, no one under a Power should be able to compel him, especially not a brand-new wizard. Even Dairine would have had trouble, without the mobiles to help hammer him down."

"I don't know, Carl. All I know is when he got to her, her pain went away -- "

"And the power she was using bled off," Kit added.

"Which lends credence to Kit's strange relationship theory," Tom said dryly, managing a wryly apologetic smile. "We're sorry to be interrogating you this way, Kit, Nita, but you two and Sarah really are the best source of information on the Labyrinth and its ruler we have; the Powers can't or won't give us a great deal in the normal way."

"It's okay, Tom, we get it," Nita said, looking up at him with a smile. "We don't mind. It's one of the reasons we came here first, instead of letting you know we were back and sleeping for the next week. I'll probably be thinking of things you ought to know for the next week, though."

"Then let's call it a day for now," Carl proposed. "We'll finish interrogating the two of you later, and maybe borrow Sarah from her Advisory."

"Okay," Nita nodded. "Let us know when."

Kit pushed himself up to his feet, reaching down to pull Nita up. "What she said."

"If you two do manage to wake up before a week goes by, give us a call."

That got both of them to laugh again before they went out the back door. Kit looked at the hedges, looked at Nita, and started tiredly reciting the spell to get them the rest of the way _home_. Or at least to Nita's. Her dad wouldn't mind if he crashed over there, and this was going to wipe them both out for the moment. No way was he jogging home afterward.

Nita joined in, stubbornly lending Kit her wizardry, and even as tired as they were they still managed to race each other to the last few syllables.

The crack of displaced air echoed back into Tom and Carl's ears, but they made it into empty space in Nita's living room just fine. Kit dropped onto the couch, dragging his shoes off, and stretched out. "Night, Neets."

"Night, Kit," Nita answered, already heading to her room and not looking back. Once she was in that bed, she wasn't going to even _move_ until she woke up on her own. She didn't hear anyone in the house to tell, so... she pulled her manual out, still walking. "Message: Dairine. Was out-time for a while. We're wiped. Kit's on the couch. Good _night_."

Kit waited until Nita's mind... he didn't like using 'felt' to describe what Nita's mind was like, but Nita asleep was fuzzily warm, like Helena's velvet First Communion dress his mama still kept in the closet. "Message: Carl. I need to talk to you and Tom about Nita, sometime she isn't there. Tomorrow, if you can arrange it."

He hated doing this. Kit _hated_ it. Neets was his partner, and there shouldn't be anything he couldn't say to Tom and Carl he couldn't say to her.

It wasn't that he didn't plan to talk to her about it. He just wanted advice first. Kit didn't know how to tell Nita that when he'd finally seen her, talking to _that One_ of all things, she'd looked... not exactly easy, but sharp. Focused. Intrigued, interested, vivid. More like herself than she'd looked since she saw Eighties, for which Kit still owed the Goblin King a headache.

And It had been looking back.

Yeah. For this one, Kit wanted Tom and Carl.

It wasn't long before his manual's page flashed with the soft light that meant he had a message in return. He ran his hand along the page, and the words sprang to life. /Of course we'll be here, Kit. Is she all right? -Carl/

"Message: Carl," Kit said, then paused as he tried to figure out a reply. He settled on, "Yes," because he couldn't make himself say Neets wasn't okay.

/All right,/ the page flashed moments later. /Get some sleep./

Kit didn't bother to send a reply. He was too busy obeying his Senior.

***

He stood in the silent room where Sarah had slept for long moments, looking at the shape her body had left in the bed, the disarrayed tangle of the sheets, the few strands of long hair she'd left on the pillow... His eyes sharpened at that sight to green-and-blue flames, and he walked across the room to pick each one up carefully. He wound them together, quick and sure, and then trapped them into a crystal, holding it up to watch the light shine through onto dark, dark strands. He would give it back to her at some point later. For now, he watched the way the light played on them.

Careless of her to leave her hair behind, really, where someone like him could do so much with it, but she had given so much of herself to the Labyrinth this time. Her breath, the touch of her skin, her tears, even her sleeping dreams and waking hopes. Her kindness, too, he thought after a moment, adding that to the list. In the aftermath, his Labyrinth had shared with him how she had acted with it. How she had spoken to wood and plant and rock, coaxing and persuading with a gentle touch that had made so much of it willing to bend to her will... of course, she had long since wrapped him in a spell of an entirely different variety. Was it truly any surprise that his best, most brilliant creation had fallen to her charms as well?

"How is it that she manages to do this?" The question was quiet, even a trifle amused as he spoke to the air. "I had thought the gatekeeper a fluke, but this time she persuaded the very walls to warn her, the trees to aid her... "

He shook his head, as puzzled by her now as he had ever been entranced with the strength he could see lurking under the foolish child. As captivated by her strength as he had been with the sheer power of her dreams and desires -- power that had shaped the world around her even before she had taken up the gift of wizardry. //If gift you could call it,// he thought darkly, thinking of the few goblins that had taken that path. They were invaluable as far as coaxing the Labyrinth to do things was concerned, but... wizardry did strange things to goblin minds, and few of them had ever lasted long.

She was stronger now. More self-possessed, more aware of the world around her as something more than an extension of herself. She was growing up -- but not old, as her acceptance of wizardry proved.

That new strength might not be enough to keep her safe on the path she had so recklessly chosen. He wasn't sure if anything would be. His powers were limited in the mortal realm, and in any case, she would hardly care for his interference... she was proud, beautifully so. It was one of the things that had made her such an interesting opponent even as a child.

She had grown up, and she had learned the first lessons the Labyrinth had taught her very well, using them to her advantage in this challenge.

He couldn't wait to see what she might do next, now that the Labyrinth had had a second round of tempering her will with her reason.

***

A small -- barely knee-high to a human, really -- female goblin walked silently through the Goblin City, and out the wide open doors into the Junk Heaps. The deep brown fur still hung raggedly around her deep gold eyes as she went along, smiling with dark, sharp pleasure at the clinging possessiveness written all through every one of them. Everything they could never stand to give up, pressed to them, weighing them down...

She continued on, walking along the madcap frenzy of the Fiery's dancing out all of their wild pleasure, their frantic joy and lust for life blazing in them and leaping in the flames as the tree was devoured... She wandered into the hedges and the stones, looking at it. The maze was stronger than it had been. Century upon century of stolen children, some attempts to reclaim them, and some dreams swallowed entire into the walls had obviously had quite the effect. So many changes... and still so useful.

...and It laughed at what the Labyrinth had become while It was absent again and vanished, pleased enough with what It had wrought this time. Such interesting things might come of them, with the whispers It had placed in their ears.

\-- Finis  



End file.
